Study for St Jerome

Author: Sarah Vowles

Refined and precise, this study of a nude man is a preparatory drawing for the figure of St Jerome in Carlo Caliari’s altarpiece of the Coronation of the Virgin with Saints Liberale, Fortunato and Jerome (fig.). Painted in the final years of Carlo’s life, it was destined for the high altar of the Duomo at Cologna Veneta, near Vicenza, where it remains today. Rearick has observed that Carlo would have been able to draw on ample material from the family’s studio archives, for his father Paolo Veronese (1528-1588) had completed an altarpiece of the same subject for the Venetian church of Ognissanti.^[1]

The contours of the figure have been laid down in black chalk, with highlights added in white chalk to articulate the musculature of the saint’s wiry back. This combination of chalks on blue paper was familiar and widespread in Veronese’s studio, but Carlo also blended in areas of red chalk to suggest the warmth of human flesh, most visible at the back of the saint’s neck, on his shoulders and on the dimples at his elbows. Veronese himself rarely used coloured chalks. This almost painterly approach to drawing was characteristic of the Bassano family, in whose workshop, under the tutelage of Francesco Bassano (1549-1592), Carlo carried out a period of training in the mid-to-late 1580s. It is likely that Bassano influenced the naturalism evident in Carlo’s study of this powerful, sinewy old man.

Carlo’s use of coloured chalks is at its most visible in his portrait drawings, such as those of the Venetian historian and statesman Paolo Paruta (1540-1598) in London,^[2] Dublin,^[3] and the heads of an old man and a cleric in New York.^[4] The closest comparison to this drawing, however, is the softer, more subtle study of a man’s back, seen from a very similar angle, now in Paris.^[5] The Paris drawing has often been given to the Bassano family, showing the extent to which the young Carlo absorbed their lessons. Thanks to the connection between the present drawing and The Coronation of the Virgin, however, there can be little doubt that this comes from Carlo’s own hand. The meticulous approach to detail, which picks out every undulation of muscle, and carefully defines the creases on the back of the old man’s neck, is also evident in Carlo’s portraits, and sets him apart from the broader, less sophisticated draughtsmanship of his uncle and assistant Benedetto Caliari (1538-1598).

Like many of the other drawings from Veronese’s studio in Rotterdam, this was formerly in the collection of the Sagredo family. The inscription ‘Aequat’ on the verso was added by Doge Nicolò Sagredo (1606-1676), the founder of that collection. It was his custom to annotate drawings with descriptions of their technique: either ‘lapis’ for chalk, or ‘aequat’ or ‘aquesta’ for pen and wash. As is clear, he accidentally misidentified the technique of the present drawing.