Saint Jerome in the wilderness

This arresting and hitherto unpublished picture showing Saint Jerome in the wilderness is a recently discovered early work by Anthony van Dyck. Dated by Christopher Brown to circa 1617 (private communication with owner), the canvas displays the bold brushwork that characterized the young artist’s style from the years prior to his departure for Italy in 1621, known as his 'first Antwerp period'.

The pose of Saint Jerome, here shown with a crucifix in his raised left hand while grasping a rock in the other, corresponds closely with the crouching, rope-bearing figure immediately behind Judas in van Dyck’s Betrayal of Christ, the monumental canvas of circa 1620-21 that arguably stands as the artist’s outstanding masterpiece from this defining early period in his native city (Madrid; Museo Nacional del Prado). It has been suggested that the present work - executed with great speed and economy - was an ad vivum study, later recast for the tormentor in the Prado Betrayal, much in the same manner that the study of an old man sold at Sotheby's New York in January 2023 (lot 110, sold for $3,075,000) subsequently served as the model for the figure of Saint Jerome in the artist’s two pictures with an angel, now at Rotterdam and Stockholm (see below). That van Dyck made such a study, which later served for this tormentor in the Prado composition, was a theory first advanced by Nora de Poorter in the 2004 catalogue raisonné of the artist's work (published prior to this picture's discovery); an argument then based on the existence of numerous surviving copies of a lost Saint Jerome type, one that corresponds exactly to the present work, albeit with variations in the landscape (in S. Barnes et al., Van Dyck, A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, New Haven and London, 2004, p. 142, no. IA7).

The subject of Saint Jerome was one that van Dyck returned to with striking frequency during his formative years in Antwerp. Indeed, three pictures of the Saint were listed in the collection of Rubens at the time of van Dyck’s master’s death in 1640. Of the three, only the sublime Saint Jerome with an Angel at Rotterdam (c.1618-20; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen) can be securely identified, having been acquired by Rubens in 1626. A further two works of this subject by van Dyck were owned by the painter Jeremias Wildens by 1653, and at least another three versions were in the collection of the Antwerp postmaster, Joan Baptista Anthonie. The earliest recorded treatment of the subject is that of the Saint writing in a landscape - a somewhat unconventional iconography - in the canvas dated to circa 1615-17, now in the Liechtenstein collection. A second rendition of the Rotterdam version - one of only two signed pictures from the artist's first Antwerp period but less well preserved and unquestionably lacking the expressive power of its counterpart - is in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (c.1618-20). Finally, a landscape-format canvas showing the Saint in the wilderness (c.1618-20) is preserved at Dresden, a work likely to be one of the three formerly in Rubens' collection. A reduced and unfinished autograph version of the Dresden picture is in a UK private collection.

Despite its execution prior to van Dyck's departure for Italy, there is a distinctly Venetian flavour to the present work, both in its bold handling and the treatment of the landscape. As with many of the artist's early works, the composition was very probably painted in emulation of - and in competition with - Rubens, who had painted a Saint Jerome in the wilderness only a few years before (c.1615; Dresden; Gemäldegalerie); a picture that, in turn, had been executed in response to the latter’s encounter with Titian's celebrated Saint Jerome in Penitence, the Venetian's late masterpiece of circa 1575, then in Santa Maria Nuova, Venice, and now in the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan.

In 1609, at the age of ten, van Dyck’s father enrolled him as a pupil of Hendrik van Balen. This was an obvious choice for his son’s teacher; van Balen was not only Dean of the Guild of Saint Luke in Antwerp, but he also lived on the same street as the van Dyck family. How long van Dyck remained with van Balen is unclear, but he eventually joined Rubens, thereby entering the most illustrious studio in the city. A lack of early documentary evidence has prompted much scholarly debate over his artistic activities from this period. As Friso Lammertse and Alejandro Vergara have suggested, van Dyck may have joined Rubens as early as 1611 or 1612 (The Young Van Dyck, exhibition catalogue, Madrid, 2012, p. 27). Some have argued that the young prodigy must have been operating his own independent studio with assistants from 1615-1618, a period in which he executed the Christ Carrying the Cross for the church of Sint-Pauluskerk in Antwerp, one of the few early commissions for which there is documentary evidence, and which reveals the remarkable fact that van Dyck was paid the same amount as Rubens who contributed a Flagellation (inscribed 1617) as part of the same commission. What seems highly probable is that the artists were collaborating by late 1616 or early 1617 on works such as Achilles discovered by Ulysses and Diomedes, dated to circa 1617-18 (Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado). In February 1618 van Dyck was registered as a master with the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke. It has long been assumed that he was the artist described by Rubens as his ‘best pupil’ in the frequently quoted letter sent that year to the English diplomat and collector, Sir Dudley Carleton. By November of 1620, van Dyck’s status in his master’s workshop is confirmed in a letter from Toby Matthew, an agent working for Carleton, in which he is referred to as 'Rubens' famous Allievo'. When van Dyck left Antwerp for Italy in the autumn of 1621 he had painted over 160 pictures, a body of work that many artists would struggle to produce over a lifetime. This prolific output was in part down to the speed and facility with which he painted but, equally, it was the irrepressible confidence of this young artist who was able to create both large-scale, multi-figural compositions as well as dynamic portraits with an assuredness that belied his youth.