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This series complements my award-winning guidebook, Chicago in Stone and Clay: A Guide to the Windy City's Architectural Geology. Henceforth I'll just call it CSC.
The CSC section and page reference for the building featured here: 5.9; pp. 51-53.
Standing on the southern side of E. Randolph Street and looking northwestward.
Behold the lower half, approximately, of the 83-story Aon Center, formerly known as the Standard Oil Building and the Amoco Building. Completed in 1973, it was originally clad in slabs of Italian Carrara Marble sliced too thin to bear the rigors of Chicago's continental climate.
By the time I took this photo, the Carrara's replacement, Mount Airy Granodiorite, had been doing its job for about a decade. While it is no means as lustrous as the original, its monumental paleness nevertheless conveys the building's "Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!" messaging quite adequately. The spire-topped Two Prudential Plaza snuggling next to it provides a nice contrast, too, with its darker, pinkish-gray Mondariz Granite exterior.
As noted in previous posts, I love the Aon, that great hulking beast, all the more for its problems and its detractors. It's good that we have been able to construct such breathtaking structures before our time to do such things runs out.
Quarried in North Carolina, the Mount Airy has been radiometrically dated to 334 ± 3 Ma ago, which places its origin in the Mississippian subperiod (Lower Carboniferous period). As a granodiorite, it's a granitoid rock whose feldspar content is mostly in the form of plagioclase. True granites, on the other hand, contain a higher proportion of alkali feldspars. Such petrologic distinctions are lost on architects, builders, and quarry operators, however. So they call this rock selection the Mount Airy Granite instead.
As is duly noted in CSC, the Mount Airy Granodiorite can also be found and scrutinized at two other Windy City sites—the Congress Plaza Hotel and Graceland Cemetery's Lehmann Mausoleum.
For much more on the site touched upon here, get and read Chicago in Stone and Clay, described at its Cornell University Press webpage.
The other photos and discussions in this series can be found in my "Chicago in Stone and Clay" Companion album. In addition, you'll find other relevant images and descriptions in my Architectural Geology: Chicago album.
The twelfth edition of the Southern Railway's guidebook to Belgium that contains details of travel to and from the country, by the Southern's and other ferry services, as well as details of destinations and attractions in Belgium. These include the Coastal resorts, the major towns and cities as well as travel further afield to the Ardennes.
The Southern were major publishers, as were other main line railways, of guides to their services and places of interest, often on an annual basis as with this guidebook. This cover, showing a barge in a typical Belgian townscape, is by G.D. Tidmarsh. Tidmarsh was an illustrator and artist who was commissioned for several railway posters.
From the 1951 Festival of Britain exhibition guidebook as less common 'joint' advert for the two Government owned airlines that would in time merge to form British Airways. The move towards two airlines, one for Continental services and the other for long distance routes had been started prior to the Second World War and "British Airways" had morphed into British European Airways whilst Imperial Airways had become the Briitsh Overseas Airways Corporation. The BEA 'winged key' logo looks quite graphically clumsy against the ex-Imperial "Speedbird" logo designed by Theyre Lee Elliott for them in the 1930s.
A scan of the front cover of "Blencathra: Portrait of a Mountain" by Ronald Turnbull, published by Frances Lincoln Limited, 2010.
It's several years since I last bought any hillwalking-related books, but I spotted this one in the window of Bookends in Carlisle last week for the knockdown price of a tenner, and so as Blencathra is my favourite Lake District fell I thought I'd give it a go. I read it from cover to cover over the space of a wet weekend, and as there seems to be no end in sight to this spell of dismal weather, I thought I'd occupy myself for a few hours by tapping out some comments.
The first point to make is that although Blencathra forms the core of the book, all of the hills included in Wainwright's Northern Fells - excluding Skiddaw and satellites - are covered. Glenderaterra and Glenderamackin also get their own chapters. Like thousands of other hillwalkers, I climbed all of these fells during a round of the Wainwrights (1986/87 in my case), and since then many have been repeatedly revisited, the main exceptions being the grassy mounds to the north and west of Knott and - of course! - Mungrisdale Common.
The second point to note is that although several of the routes are sketched out the book is not, of course, a guidebook. Instead it's more of an inspirational read, and the most attractive feature to many people would probably be the photos - some of which are quite stunning. It's also crammed with fascinating historical information including, for example, the first written account of the ascent of Sharp Edge. However, my favourite tidbit is the potted life history of the self-castrating, mad vicar of Threkeld, the Reverend Naughley! Local geology is covered and there's an interesting account of the old mining industry, mainly focusing on Carrock Fell and High Pike.
The origin of many of the place names is included, and I was fascinated to learn that Mungrisdale is apparently derived from Mungo's valley of the pigs! In this context I'd be interested to know why the author drops the apostrophe from Hall's Fell on Blencathra, as this is the spelling used in all my guidebooks and on all my maps. The book is so carefully researched that I'm sure there's a good reason for this - I just don't know what it is!
On the downside, with the exception of the fabled fish of Bowscale Tarn - which are covered at some length - there isn't a great deal said of the local wildlife. Over the years I've made numerous visits to this area in search of various birds, butterflies (Mountain Ringlets at the Back o' Blencathra), bugs (Junipers Shieldbugs in Mosedale), and dragonflies (Keeled Skimmers at the foot of Carrock Fell) and I think there's enough going on here to merit a mention.
Back to the hills: All of Wainwright's routes up Blencathra are covered, in particular the six main ridges and four ravines. Although I've done all the ridge routes, I've only managed to force myself up two of the ravines (Blease and Doddick), and so the author should be commended for his dedication to the task! One feature common to many of these walks is the crossing of Scaleby Beck between Scales Fell and Doddick Fell, and - more crucially - the climb out of the gap on the west side:
www.flickr.com/photos/8453647@N05/4959779846
In my opinion this is technically harder than anything that can't be avoided on Hall's Fell Ridge or Sharp Edge, and on several occasions I've seen people really struggle here. In fact, for a period of time there was a chain rope hammered into the rock to facilitate the climb but this disappeared some years ago. Although I accept that this is not a guidebook, I still would have thought that this potential hazard was worth pointing out.
On the other fells covered, I was glad to see that my favourite routes up Bannerdale Crags (East Ridge) and Carrock Fell (Rake Trod) were highlighted.
In case anyone is interested, my own photos taken on or of Blencathra over the past ten years or so can be found here:
www.flickr.com/photos/8453647@N05/tags/blencathra
Photos relating to Bannerdale Crags, Bowscale Fell, Carrock Fell, Great Calva, High Pike, Knott, Mungrisdale and Threkeld can be accessed via the tags link.
In summary I think this is an excellent book, and as it's still widely available on-line, would perhaps make a good Christmas present for someone!
30 November 2015
Cacela Velha is not found in every Algarve guidebook, but its beach, views and history is hard to beat. The village is located on a hill above the Ria Formosa natural park and the sea. From its walls you will find one of the most beautiful panoramic views of the Algarve. There is a fort, a 16th century church, clusters of traditional blue and white Algarve houses, and a single eatery. A series of steps leads to a clean and massive sand beach - with great views and a handful of fishing boats.
Set in the most charming part of the Ria Formosa, Cacela is a beautiful walled town overlooking the estuary and the barrier islands. It was a point for Greek and Phoenician navigators, and according to some authors it was Cunistorgis, the ancient capital of the Cúneos. The Romans enlarged it and the Arabs gave it walls. Cacela fell, in 713, to the Moors.
Cacela became a important settlement, defended by a castle from the 9th-10th century. D. Paio Peres Coreia took the town for Portugal in 1240, and it is said to be one of the castles in Portugal's coat of arms.
With the earthquake of November 1, 1755, the town was badly damaged and rebuilt. Today is it a hidden gem on Portugal's Algarve coast. www.azores-adventures.com/2017/04/cecelia-velha-is-a-hidd...
Disneyland Guidebook Map Dinnerware set of four.
A collectible by Kevin Kidney & Jody Daily in honor of Disneyland's 55th Anniversary
Ceramic. Edition Size: 1955
Retail: $40 for the whole set of 4 plates.
A tourist couple consult their guidebook underneath the Statute of Hannes Hafstein in downtown Reykjavik, Iceland. One thing I noticed is that many of Iceland's politicians and important historical figures dating from the early Vikings were poets.The National Cemetery at Þingvellir is not filled with generals or military men but with poets. Hannes Hafstein was no exception. History records him as a politician and poet. Though he did graduate from Law School in Denmark and served as President of the Bank of Iceland in his later years, none of the biographies I have found list lawyer or banker as his occupation or advocation. He was a prolific poet who used his words to encourage Icelanders and promote an independent Iceland.
Born in 1861, he was a Member of the Alping (The parliament of Iceland) on and off from 1900 to 1920. In 1904 he became the First Prime Minister of Iceland and the first Icelander to serve as a member of the Danish Cabinet. In 1909 he became the president of the bank of Iceland. He remained at the bank until failing health forced him to retired in 1917. He died in 1922. The larger than life statue was sculpted by Einar Jónsson and unveiled in 1931.
References:
grapevine.is/travel/2013/08/14/a-quick-journey-of-music-a...
www.hannesarholt.is/english-4/
windowstoworldhistory.weebly.com/hannes-hafstein-icelands...
"According to this guidebook we are sitting on a bench in Gijon in the north of Spain, two old people are walking behind us and a photographer is taking a photo of us from another bench in front of the book shop... and that photo will get put onto the internet on a site called flickr, catapulting us into world-wide fame and fortune......"
(.....in my mind...)
So, in St. Petersburg for a short time, where should I go next, he asks himself and his guidebook?
Guise book no good, Russian impossible to understand.
Decisions, decisions, to hell lets go to the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood.
OK, we are off, way off.
Last week, two of my friends offered to take me on a tour of the jewels of Norfolk churches. Despite having lived in either north Suffolk or Norfolk most of my life, back in those days I had no idea about churches, nor half the villages where these jewels can be found, even existed.
First on the list was Salle.
It was a grim, wet and misty morning when Sarah and Richard picked me up at the Catholic Cathedral, and so we made our way against the rush hour traffic whilst Richard tried to keep the windscreen clear as my clothes dried out causing a slight fog in the car.
Ss Peter and Paul seems to be in the middle of nowhere, with just two other buildings keeping it company. Salle was clearly a rich parish back in the day, as it is a huge church, serving the village and the large country house, lost to view behind trees nearby.
It is a church that has something for everyone: font and cover, support arm for font cover, good glass, fine memorials, two hidden chapels, painted screens and carved bosses. And so much more beside.
Here is what my friend Simon has to say. He likes it too.
---------------------------------------------------
During their awesome reign over the other great teams of Europe in the 1970s and 1980s, Liverpool football club placed a huge sign in the changing room corridor, so that it was the last thing visiting teams saw before they walked out on to the pitch: This is ANFIELD, it warned. The name alone was enough to impress. Similarly, the cover of the guidebook here proclaims, in a single word, SALLE. Again, it suffices; the word, pronounced to rhyme with call, stands for the building. Perhaps only the name Blythburgh has the same power in all East Anglia.
St Peter and St Paul is big. This is accentuated by the way in which it stands almost alone in the barley fields, with only a couple of Victorian buildings and a cricket pitch for company. What an idyllic spot! And yet there is an urban quality to the building, as if this was some great city church in the middle of Norwich or Bristol. It went up in the course of the 15th century, a replacement for an earlier building on the same site, broadly contemporary with neighbouring Cawston. While Cawston was largely the work of a single family, here the building benefited from an accident of history; several very wealthy families owned manors and halls in the parish at the same time, and it so happened that the time was the greatest era of rural church building.
Among them were the Boleyns, the Brewes, the Mautebys, the Briggs, the Morleys, the Luces and the Kerdistons, and some of their shields appear above the great west door, along with two mighty censing angels, characteristic of late medieval piety. A steady stream of hefty bequests meant that no expense needed to be spared, and the mighty tower with its vast bell openings was topped with battlements and pinnacles on the very eve of the Reformation.
As at Blythburgh, St Peter and St Paul benefited from the restraint of a late restoration, and the building as we see it now has no external Victorian additions. It is all of a piece. The porches either side are huge affairs, matching the transepts, and give the effect of a vast animal, a dragon perhaps, sprawling with erect head in the Norfolk countryside. Its tail is the chancel, in itself longer and higher than many Norfolk churches. The aisles are tall, austere, parapeted, the Perpendicular windows arcades of glass. In the porches, the vaulted ceilings are studded with bosses; the central one in the north porch depicts Christ in Majesty, sitting on a rainbow in judgement.
You enter the building from the west, an unusual experience in East Anglia, and your first sight is of the seven sacraments font with its tall 15th century canopy, similar to the cover at Cawston. This one is so big it is supported by a crane attached to the ringing gallery under the tower.
The font below is interesting because each panel is supported by an angel holding a symbol of the sacrament above - a pot of chrism oil beneath Baptism, for example. The panels themselves are simply done, and are not particularly characterful, apart from the way that Mary turns away and is comforted at the Crucifixion. This panel faces west, and then anticlockwise are the Mass (viewed sideways, as at nearby Great Witchingham), Ordination (the candidate kneeling), Baptism (a server holds the book up for the Priest to read), Confirmation (the candidate obviously a child), Penance (perhaps the most interesting panel - the penitent kneels in a shriving pew), Matrimony (the couples' hands joined by a stole, she in late 15th century dress) and finally Last Rites (the dying man on the floor under blankets as at Great Witchingham).
You can see all these panels below - click on them to enlarge them. The font step has a dedicatory inscription to John and Agnes Luce, asking for prayers for their souls. We know that John died in 1489. Perhaps the actual fabric of the building was complete by this date.
Beyond the font stretches the vastness of the building, the arcades gathering the eyes and leading them forward to the great east window. The chancel arch is barely there at all, just a simple high opening; but as MR James pointed out, it was never intended to be seen.The sheer bulk of the rood screen dado tells us quite how vast the rood apparatus must have been here, and the arch would have been pretty well hidden. Everything is built to scale; although everything has been cut off above the panels, probably in the late 1540s, the panels themselves are enormous, almost six feet high. As at Cawston, St Gregory, St Jerome, St Ambrose and St Augustine, the four Doctors of the Church, are on the doors. Either side are just two surviving paintings; to the north are Thomas and James, to the south are Philip and Bartholomew. The empty panels are a mystery; the screen stood here for a century before its destruction, so it must have been finished; and the dado seems too high to have been hidden by nave altars. And yet, it has all the appearance of never having been painted.
Because the building is so vast, the surviving medieval glass seems scattered, but there is actually a lot of it and some of it is very significant. Some was moved during the restoration of the early 20th century, when the hideous modern glass in the north transept was installed, and the yellow galley lozenges were thankfully replaced with clear glass in the 1970s. The images in the east window are mainly figures; old kings kneel before young princes, there are armoured men and angels, the remains of a scaly dragon. In the centre at the bottom is a perfect Trinity shield, displayed by an angel looking askance.
Some of the panels are now in the south transept. These include fragments of a set of the orders of angels. A kneeling figure is Thomas Brigg, donor of the transept; the scroll behind him begins Benedicat Virgo, 'Blessed Virgin'. The mother of God sits surrounded by red glory, and two women holding croziers, one of them crowned, may be St Etheldreda and St Hilda. Certainly, the crowned figure holding a cross is St Helena. You can see all these above.
Despite the wonders of the font, the screen and the glass, the great glory of the building for me is the set of bosses that line the roof of the chancel. They are easily missed, being very high, and need a good lens; a couple of my photos did not come out as well as I'd hoped, and so I must go back, as if I needed an excuse. There are nine altogether, the first and last set against the walls at the ends of the roof ridge, and they form a kind of rosary sequence of joyful and glorious mysteries. They start with the Annunciation in the west (see left) and then continue with the Adoration of the Shepherds, the Adoration of the Magi, the Presentation in the Temple, the Entry into Jerusalem, the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection , and the Ascension into Heaven. You can see these last eight in John Salmon's splendid photographs below.
There is a fine set of return stalls in the chancel. Although Salle probably never had a college of Priests, all those Masses for the dead must have provided plenty of employment, because we know that there were seven Priests here at a time when the population of the parish was barely 200. Bench ends include heads, a dragon tied up in a knot, a restored pelican in her piety, and a monkey. The misericord seats feature faces, including one that is quite extraordinary.
Although the roof isn't up to the glory of neighbouring Cawston, it includes lots of original angels and paintwork, including sacred monograms, and around the wallplate part of the Te Deum Laudamus and psalm 150. These particular texts seem to have provided the inspiration for many late 15th century interiors; the angels in the roof, the animals on the bench ends, the Saints on the rood screen all in harmony: Let everything that has breath Praise ye the Lord! The benches are mostly renewed now, but the pulpit is an elegant example of the 15th century, from the time when a priority began to be placed on preaching.
Curiously, it has been rather awkwardly converted into a three-decker arrangement, probably in the 18th century, with the addition of a platform and desk from a set of box pews. A large sounding board has been placed overhead. The box pews suggest that the medieval furnishings were replaced at an early date, although the replacements too have gone now.
Salle is one of those churches full of intriguing little details that might easily pass you by, so great is the wonder of everything around. Those two little corbel heads above the south door, for instance - what were they for? Perhaps they supported an image that could be seen from the north doorway as people entered, although not a St Christopher as the guidebook suggests, I think. There is a pretty piscina in the unfortunate north transept that has been outlined in wood, a memorial and helm above, a tall image bracket in the corner of the wall of the south transept, a floreated piscina nearby.
There are many brasses and brass inlays in the nave floor; one of the most interesting is a chalice brass (although the chalice is now gone) to Simon Boleyn, a Priest, who died in 1489, and to the east of it a pair of brasses to Geoffrey and Alice Boleyn, great-grandparents to Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII. Another pair of brasses are to Thomas and Katherine Rose and their eight children. Unlike many churches, Salle actually retains some of the 'missing' brasses, now locked away for safety. It would be nice to think they could eventually be reset in the floor.
One part of the building that many visitors must miss is the chapel above the north porch. There is no sign indicating it; but the doorway, at the west end of the north aisle, is always open. Inside, the vaulted roof is punctuated by spectacularly pretty bosses which you can view at close quarters. The colour is a bit fanciful, but they are fascinating, particularly the central boss of the Coronation of the Queen of Heaven - how on earth did that survive the Reformation?
This is a tremendous building, a box of fascinating delights. What purpose does it serve now? As I said in the introduction, its size was not in response to the needs of a congregation, and as far as worship is concerned it will never be full. It remains constantly in use, however; for regular services in the chancel, sometimes for concerts and recordings, but also of course for the poshest sort of wedding, the kind only the Church of England can provide, and no doubt other elements of the core business of CofE PLC. It is easy to be cynical, but if they ensure the survival of the building, then so be it.
Simon Knott, June 2004
Photo from Valentine’s City of New York Guidebook.
"Edgar Allan Poe spent the last years of his life, from 1846 to 1849, in The Bronx at Poe Cottage, now located at Kingsbridge Road and the Grand Concourse. A small wooden farmhouse built about 1812, the cottage once commanded unobstructed vistas over the rolling Bronx hills to the shores of Long Island...."
-- Bronx County Historical Society
St Peter and St Paul, Salle, Norfolk
During their awesome reign over the other great teams of Europe in the 1970s and 1980s, Liverpool football club placed a huge sign in the changing room corridor, so that it was the last thing visiting teams saw before they walked out on to the pitch: This is ANFIELD, it warned. The name alone was enough. Similarly, the cover of the guidebook here proclaims, in a single word, SALLE. Again, it suffices; the word, pronounced to rhyme with call, stands for the building. Perhaps only the name Blythburgh has the same power in all East Anglia.
The greatest East Anglian churches were built in the 15th century. It is often observed that there can never have been enough people to fill them, but this is to miss the point. They were never intended for the forms of worship to which they now play host.
The shape of a late medieval church is not an accident. East Anglian parish churches of the 15th century had many common features; wide aisles to enable liturgical processions, a chancel for the celebration of Mass, places for other altars, niches for devotional statues, a focus towards the Blessed Sacrament in the east, a large nave for social activities, large windows to fill the building with light, a roof of angels to proclaim a hymn of praise, a pulpit for the preaching of orthodox doctrine, benches to enable the people to hear the preaching, and carvings, stained glass and wall paintings of the sacraments, Gospels and rosary mysteries, of the catechism and teaching of the Catholic Church.
As Le Corbusier might have said if he'd been around at the time, a late medieval East Anglian church was a machine for making Catholicism happen.
No longer, of course. The radical and violent fracture in popular religion in the middle years of the 16th century gave birth to the Church of England, and the new Church inherited buildings that were often unsuitable for congregational protestant liturgy - a problem that the Church of England has never satisfactorily solved.
Over the centuries, the problem has been addressed in different ways; celebrating Communion at a table in the nave, for example, and blocking off the chancel for other uses. Although this was challenged by the Laudian party in the early part of the 17th century, it was the way that many parishes reinvented their buildings, and most were to stay like that until the middle years of the 19th century. Some went further: a pulpit placed halfway down the nave, or even at the back of the church, meant that the seating could be arranged so that it no longer focused towards the east, thus breaking the link with Catholic (and Laudian) sacramentalism. For several centuries, Anglican churches focused on the pulpit rather than the altar.
With the rise of the 19th century Oxford Movement, all this underwent another dramatic change, with the great majority of our medieval parish churches having their interiors restored to their medieval integrity, reinventing themselves as sacramental spaces. This Victorian conception of the medieval suited itself to congregational worship, and responded in a satisfactory way to the structure of the building. But still, of course, they weren't full.
This 19th century re-imagining is the condition in which we find most of them today, and Anglican theologians everywhere are asking the question that the Catholic Church asked itself at Vatican II in the 1960s - is a 19th century liturgical space really appropriate for the Church of the 21st century?
It requires a shift in the mind to recall that these were not originally Anglican buildings, but it is a shift we need to make. The idea of a previously unchanging Church now confronting the demands of the modern age is wholly incorrect. These buildings have faced a variety of challenges over the centuries; they have only ever been truly suitable for the use for which they were originally built six hundred years ago.
Two of the largest late medieval churches in East Anglia are just three miles apart, at Cawston and Salle in the middle of Norfolk. These clusters are not uncommon; think of Blythburgh, Southwold and Walberswick in Suffolk, for example, or Lavenham and Long Melford in the same county. But Cawston and Salle are really close - you can see the tower of one from the other. St Peter and St Paul is a complete example of a 15th century rebuilding; St Agnes at Cawston retains its elegant earlier chancel.
If not merely for congregational worship, why were these churches built so big? Impressive as they seem now, they must have been awesome at the time they were built, since they were the only substantial buildings outside of the towns, and would have dwarfed the houses of the parish. Some were in villages; but many were not. Salle church has always been out in the fields. Why are earlier East Anglian churches not so massive? Certainly, East Anglia has its cathedrals; Norwich and Ely pre-date the great churches by several centuries, and Bury Abbey was bigger than either before its destruction. The great majority of East Anglia's churches are piecemeal affairs; typically, a 13th century chancel, which must have been the most substantial part of the building when it was first erected, an early 14th century nave and tower, and perhaps later elaborations of the piece with aisles and a clerestory. Salle and Cawston churches are both rebuildings of earlier structures, but a surprising number of East Anglian churches were not rebuilt, until perhaps the Victorians saw the need for a new chancel, or new aisles. Often, these smaller churches are exquisitely beautiful, as if beauty rather than grandeur was the imperative.
And then, towards the end of the 1340s, a great pestilence swept across Europe; in East Anglia, outside of Norwich which got off lightly, it killed perhaps a half of the population. In emptying the countryside, it completely altered the economic balance; a shortage of labour gave new power to the survivors, perhaps setting in place the preconditions for the capitalism that we can recognise by the 16th century. And, in extinguishing the flower of Decorated architecture, it also gave birth to the great love affair between the late medieval mind and death.
In Catholic theology there is no great divide between the dead and the living. For the medieval Christian, communion was something that existed between all members of the parish, whether alive or dead. Thus, prayers were said for the souls of the dead (who, it was presumed, were saying prayers for the souls of the living).
To ensure that prayers were said for them after their death, the very richest people endowed chantries. These were foundations, by which priests could be employed to say masses for their souls in perpetuity. A priest in such a capacity was called a chantry priest. The masses would be said at a chantry altar, probably in the nave; if the person was rich enough, this might be enclosed in a specially constructed chantry chapel. Many churches had them. After the Reformation, many were pressed into service as family mausoleums or pews.
For the poorest people, there was the opportunity to join a guild, where, for a penny or so a week, they could ensure that the guild chantry priest would say masses for their soul after their death (along with those of the other dead members of the guild). Many of these guilds were organised around particular occupations or devotions, and became a focus of social activity. The investment that produced the income to pay the chantry priests was most commonly in land. The church or guild oversaw the management of the land, which is one of the reasons we have an image of a wealthy pre-Reformation church. Land bought to produce income in this way was known as chantry land, a name surviving in many places today. Those who invested in chantries (and few and far between must have been those who didn't) presumed that they were ensuring prayers and masses in perpetuity; but, of course, this was not to be.
Bequests and chantries seem to have reached their peak in the 15th century. Perhaps the Black Death reinforced the urgency of the task. People did not merely want to be remembered; they wanted to be prayed for. And so, those who could afford it ensured that this was not forgotten by leaving their wealth in the very place that was at the centre of communion: the parish church. The richest paid for the additions of aisles and chapels, or for a new font or rood screen. This was not just a naked desire for the recognition of their family status. There was an underlying insecurity to the new landed classes. They wanted to control their destiny beyond their deaths. And so, their gift would be recorded in the form of a dedicatory inscription. One of these survives on the screen at Cawston, and another on the base of the font at Salle. Orate pro anima, they begin, "Pray for the soul of...", an injunction urgently emphasised by the pre-Reformation liturgy, only to be cursed and defaced by the later Anglicans and puritans. Stained glass was another common gift, as well as images, candlesticks, furnishings. Thus were many churches developed piecemeal.
But sometimes, where a parish could rely on a steady supply of substantial bequests, they might be channelled into a complete rebuilding, as at Salle, a summa cum laude apothesosis, where the new church of the late 15th century survives in pretty much its original form. Sometimes, a single wealthy family would shape and direct the rebuilding of a church. One of the richest families in East Anglia in the 14th and 15th centuries was the de la Poles, the Earls of Suffolk. Their mark can be found throughout East Anglia, but most famously and substantially at Wingfield in Suffolk, and at Cawston in Norfolk. Theirs was a long term project; at Cawston, the tower predates the furnishings of the nave and chancel by almost a century.
So why so vast? Certainly, it was ad maiorem deo gloria, to the Greater Glory of God; but it was also to the greater glory of the de la Poles and their contemporaries. The great landed families of England came into the late middle ages full of confidence, and they were determined to demonstrate it. They had survived the Black Death. They had grown richer on its consequences. They had assumed a political power unthinkable a few centuries before. They controlled not just the wealth but the imagination of their parishes. They asserted orthodox Catholic dogma in the face of rural superstitions and abuses. They imposed a homogenised Catholicism on late medieval England. And, as they increased their secular power and influence, a time would come when they would embrace the Great Idea already beginning to take shape on the continent - protestantism. But that was still in the future.
And so, to Salle. St Peter and St Paul is big. This is accentuated by the way in which it stands almost alone in the barley fields, with only a couple of Victorian buildings and a cricket pitch for company. What an idyllic spot! And yet there is an urban quality to the building, as if this was some great city church in the middle of Norwich or Bristol. It went up in the course of the 15th century, a replacement for an earlier building on the same site, broadly contemporary with neighbouring Cawston. While Cawston was largely the work of a single family, here the building benefited from an accident of history; several very wealthy families owned manors and halls in the parish at the same time, and it so happened that the time was the greatest era of rural church building.
Among them were the Boleyns, the Brewes, the Mautebys, the Briggs, the Morleys, the Luces and the Kerdistons, and some of their shields appear above the great west door, along with two mighty censing angels, characteristic of late medieval piety. A steady stream of hefty bequests meant that no expense needed to be spared, and the mighty tower with its vast bell openings was topped with battlements and pinnacles on the very eve of the Reformation.
As at Blythburgh, St Peter and St Paul benefited from the restraint of a late restoration, and the building as we see it now has no external Victorian additions. It is all of a piece. The porches either side are huge affairs, matching the transepts, and give the effect of a vast animal, a dragon perhaps, sprawling with erect head in the Norfolk countryside. Its tail is the chancel, in itself longer and higher than many Norfolk churches. The aisles are tall, austere, parapeted, the Perpendicular windows arcades of glass. In the porches, the vaulted ceilings are studded with bosses; the central one in the north porch depicts Christ in Majesty, sitting on a rainbow in judgement.
You enter the building from the west, an unusual experience in East Anglia, and your first sight is of the seven sacraments font with its tall 15th century canopy, similar to the cover at Cawston. This one is so big it is supported by a crane attached to the ringing gallery under the tower. The font below is interesting because each panel is supported by an angel holding a symbol of the sacrament above - a pot of chrism oil beneath Baptism, for example. The panels themselves are simply done, and are not particularly characterful, apart from the way that Mary turns away and is comforted at the Crucifixion. This panel faces west, and then anticlockwise are the Mass (viewed sideways, as at nearby Great Witchingham), Ordination (the candidate kneeling), Baptism (a server holds the book up for the Priest to read), Confirmation (the candidate obviously a child), Penance (perhaps the most interesting panel - the penitent kneels in a shriving pew), Matrimony (the couples' hands joined by a stole, she in late 15th century dress) and finally Last Rites (the dying man on the floor under blankets also as at Great Witchingham). The font step has a dedicatory inscription to John and Agnes Luce, asking for prayers for their souls. We know that John died in 1489. Perhaps the fabric of the building was complete by this date.
Beyond the font stretches the vastness of the building, the arcades gathering the eyes and leading them forward to the great east window. The chancel arch is barely there at all, just a simple high opening; but as MR James pointed out, it was never intended to be seen.The sheer bulk of the rood screen dado tells us quite how vast the rood apparatus must have been here, and the arch would have been pretty well hidden. Everything is built to scale; although everything has been cut off above the panels, probably in the late 1540s, the panels themselves are enormous, almost six feet high. As at Cawston, St Gregory, St Jerome, St Ambrose and St Augustine, the four Doctors of the Church, are on the doors. Either side are just two surviving paintings; to the north are Thomas and James, to the south are Philip and Bartholomew. The empty panels are a mystery; the screen stood here for a century before its destruction, so it must have been finished; and the dado seems too high to have been hidden by nave altars. And yet, it has all the appearance of never having been painted.
Because the building is so vast, the surviving medieval glass seems scattered, but there is actually a lot of it and some of it is very significant. Some was moved during the restoration of the early 20th century, when the modern glass in the north transept was installed, and the yellow galley lozenges were thankfully replaced with clear glass in the 1970s. The images in the east window are mainly figures; old kings kneel before young princes, there are armoured men and angels, the remains of a scaly dragon. In the centre at the bottom is a perfect Trinity shield, displayed by an angel looking askance.
Some of the panels are now in the south transept. These include fragments of a set of the orders of angels. A kneeling figure is Thomas Brigg, donor of the transept; the scroll behind him begins Benedicat Virgo, 'Blessed Virgin'. The mother of God sits surrounded by red glory, and two women holding croziers, one of them crowned, may be St Etheldreda and St Hilda. Certainly, the crowned figure holding a cross is St Helena.
Despite the wonders of the font, the screen and the glass, the crowning glory of the building is the set of bosses that line the roof of the chancel. They are easily missed, being very high. There are nine altogether, the first and last set against the walls at the ends of the roof ridge, and they form a kind of rosary sequence of joyful and glorious mysteries. They start with the Annunciation in the west (see left) and then continue with the Adoration of the Shepherds, the Adoration of the Magi, the Presentation in the Temple, the Entry into Jerusalem, the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, and the Ascension into Heaven.
There is a fine set of return stalls in the chancel. Although Salle probably never had a college of Priests, all those Masses for the dead must have provided plenty of employment, because we know that there were seven Priests here at a time when the population of the parish was barely 200. Bench ends include heads, a dragon tied up in a knot, a cock, a restored pelican in her piety, and a monkey. The misericord seats feature faces, including one that is quite extraordinary.
Although the roof isn't up to the glory of neighbouring Cawston, it includes lots of original angels and paintwork, including sacred monograms, and around the wallplate part of the Te Deum Laudamus and Psalm 150. These particular texts seem to have provided the inspiration for many late 15th century interiors; the angels in the roof, the animals on the bench ends, the Saints on the rood screen all in harmony: Let everything that has breath Praise ye the Lord!
The nave benches are mostly renewed now, but the pulpit is an elegant example of the 15th century, from the time when a priority began to be placed on preaching. Curiously, it has been rather awkwardly converted into a three-decker arrangement, probably in the 18th century, with the addition of a platform and desk from a set of box pews. A large sounding board has been placed overhead. The box pews suggest that the medieval furnishings were replaced at an early date, although the replacements too have gone now.
Salle is one of those churches full of intriguing little details that might easily pass you by, so great is the wonder of everything around. Those two little corbel heads above the south door, for instance - what were they for? Perhaps they supported an image that could be seen from the north doorway as people entered, although not a St Christopher as the guidebook suggests, I think. There is a pretty piscina in the unfortunate north transept that has been outlined in wood, a memorial and helm above, a tall image bracket in the corner of the wall of the south transept, a floreated piscina nearby.
There are many brasses and brass inlays in the nave floor; one of the most interesting is a chalice brass (although the chalice is now gone) to Simon Boleyn, a Priest, who died in 1489, and to the east of it a pair of brasses to Geoffrey and Alice Boleyn, great-grandparents to Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII. Another pair of brasses are to Thomas and Katherine Rose and their eight children. Unlike many churches, Salle actually retains some of the 'missing' brasses, now locked away for safety. It would be nice to think they could eventually be reset in the floor.
One part of the building that many visitors must miss is the chapel above the north porch. There is no sign indicating it; but the doorway, at the west end of the north aisle, is always open. Inside, the vaulted roof is punctuated by spectacularly pretty bosses which you can view at close quarters. The colour is a bit fanciful, but they are fascinating, particularly the central boss of the Coronation of the Queen of Heaven - how on earth did that survive the Reformation?
This is a tremendous building, a box of fascinating delights. What purpose does it serve now? As I said in the introduction, its size was not in response to the needs of a congregation, and as far as worship is concerned it will never be full. It remains constantly in use, however; for regular services in the chancel, sometimes for concerts and recordings, but also of course for the poshest sort of wedding, the kind only the Church of England can provide, and no doubt other elements of the core business of CofE PLC. It is easy to be cynical, but if they ensure the survival of the building, then so be it.
To think our guidebook gave this only two stars, below Old Faithfull. It must be one of the wonders of the natural world, a huge hot spring with bacterial mats all around the edge, the bacteria showing different colours according to the temperature of the water.
Images I made for a guidebook about the Brauneck area in Bavaria.
Climber: Benni Plahl
Photo by Bruno Axhausen
www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/435728
The Last Communion of Saint Jerome
Artist:Botticelli (Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi) (Italian, Florence 1444/45–1510 Florence)
Date:early 1490s
Medium:Tempera and gold on wood
Dimensions:13 1/2 x 10 in. (34.3 x 25.4 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Bequest of Benjamin Altman, 1913
Accession Number:14.40.642
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 640
The great fourth-century scholar and translator of the Bible into Latin is shown in his cell near Bethlehem, supported by his brethren as he receives Last Communion. Famous in its day, the picture was painted for the Florentine wool merchant Francesco del Pugliese, a supporter of the radical preacher Savonarola. An opponent of the Medici, Pugliese may have been attracted to the subject for its deeply devotional content. The period frame was carved in the workshop of Giuliano da Maiano; the lunette is by Bartolomeo di Giovanni, who sometimes collaborated with Botticelli.
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Catalogue Entry
The painting was identified by Horne (1915) with a picture described in the 1502 inventory of Francesco del Pugliese as "unaltro quadro dipintouj eltransito di sa[n] girolamo dimano didecto sandro" (another work in which is shown the death of Saint Jerome by the hand of Sandro [Botticelli] ). Its fame may be gauged by the citations in two early guidebooks to Florence. The Anonimo Magliabecchiano (Gaddiano 1542–56) lists it among Botticelli’s "small, extremely beautiful works." The picture is, indeed, among the most exquisite of the artist’s small devotional paintings. It has been dated as early as about 1490 but is more frequently placed between 1495 and 1500 (see, most recently, Cecchi 2005 and Zöllner 2005). Horne (1915) gives the most thorough account of the iconography and detailed information on Pugliese, a wealthy wool merchant and a notable patron of the arts. (He may have commissioned Piero di Cosimo’s paintings of primitive man in the MMA: 75.7.1, 75.7.2.) Pugliese was a staunch supporter of Savonarola and an opponent of the Medici (he was in the convent of San Marco the night Savonarola was arrested and in 1513 was exiled for having referred to Lorenzo de’ Medici as "il magnifico merda"). The subject of the picture has been related to Pugliese’s deep religious convictions (the most popular image of Saint Jerome in the fifteenth century shows him either as a scholar in his study or as an ascetic in the wilderness).
The subject is based on a letter addressed to Pope Damasus (366–384) describing Jerome’s death in 420 A.D. In the fifteenth century the letter was ascribed to Eusebius of Caesarea, but it dates, instead, from the twelfth century (the Pseudo-Eusebius of Cremona). Jerome is shown in his hermit’s cell near Bethlehem, kneeling in front of a bed covered with a coarse coverlet. On the back wall of the wattle cell hang palm branches, a crucifix, and a cardinal’s hat (although a doctor of the church, Jerome was not, in fact, a cardinal but was often shown as one). The arrangement is suggestive of a church altar. The saint receives communion from fellow monks, the two youngest of whom serve as acolytes holding candles. He is supported by another monk. All are tonsured. "And as soon as the priest who held the eucharist came near to him, the glorious man, with our aid, raised himself on his knees, and lifted his head, and with many tears and sighs, beating his breast many times, he said: 'Thou art my God and my Lord, who suffered Death and the Passion for me, and none other!’" [. . . And when the saint had made an end of these words, he] "received the most holy body of Christ, and cast himself again upon the ground, with his hands crossed upon his breast, singing the canticle of Simeon, the prophet, ‘Nunc dimittis servum tuum’" (Horne 1908).
Since 1989 the picture has been displayed in an exceptionally fine Florentine frame of the period almost certainly carved in the workshop of Giuliano da Majano (it should be compared to the frame of a terracotta relief in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; see John Pope-Hennessy, Catalogue of Italian Sculpture in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1964, vol. 1, pp. 161–62, no. 136, fig. 158). The painting in the lunette of the frame shows the Trinity flanked by angels and has been attributed by Everett Fahy to Bartolomeo di Giovanni. Both Giuliano da Majano and Bartolomeo di Giovanni are known to have worked with Botticelli; the latter made a copy of this picture (Galleria Pallavicini, Rome). Another fine copy, evidently from Botticelli’s workshop, was formerly in the Balbi collection, Genoa, and is now in a private collection in New York. A contemporary drawing after this composition is in the Robert Lehman Collection (The Met, 1975.1.280).
Keith Christiansen 2011
Provenance
Francesco di Filippo del Pugliese, Florence (by 1502–d. 1519); Niccolò di Piero del Pugliese, Florence (1519–before 1553); marchese Gino Capponi, Palazzo Capponi, Florence (by 1841–d. 1876; as by Castagno); his daughter, marchesa Farinola, Palazzo Capponi, Florence (1876–1912); [Duveen, New York, 1912]; Benjamin Altman, New York (1912–d. 1913)
Exhibition History
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Art Treasures of the Metropolitan," November 7, 1952–September 7, 1953, no. 88.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Masterpieces of Fifty Centuries," November 15, 1970–February 15, 1971, no. 185.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Florentine Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum," June 15–August 15, 1971, no catalogue.
THIS WORK MAY NOT BE LENT, BY TERMS OF ITS ACQUISITION BY THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART.
References
Francesco di Filippo del Pugliese. Will of Francesco del Pugliese. February 28, 1502 [Archivio di Stato, Florence, Rogiti di Ser Lorenzo di Zanobi Violi, Protocollo dal 14 Giugno, 1500, al 20 Maryo, 1503–4. Segnato, V. 356; published in Horne 1915, Burlington Magazine], lists it as by Botticelli.
Antonio Billi. Il libro. [ca. 1516–30], unpaginated [two copies in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze: MS. Magl. XIII, 89 and MS. Magl. XXV, 636; published in Carl Frey, ed., "Il libro di Antonio Billi," Berlin, 1892, p. 29], mentions a picture of Saint Jerome among "quadri di cose pichole" by Botticelli.
Anonimo Gaddiano. Manuscript. [ca. 1542–56], fol. 85 recto [Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, MS. Magl. XVII, 17; published in Carl Frey, ed., "Il codice Magliabechiano," Berlin, 1892, p. 105], mentions it.
Federigo Fantozzi. Nuova guida ovvero descrizione storico, artistico, critica della città e contorni di Firenze. Florence, 1842, p. 399, mentions it as a work by Castagno.
Otto Mündler. Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst 2 (1867), p. 279, recognizes it as probably the original of a copy in the Balbi collection, Genoa, but ascribes it to Filippino Lippi.
Jacob Burckhardt. Der Cicerone: Eine Anleitung zum Genuss der Kunstwerke Italiens. Ed. A. von Zahn. Vol. 3, Malerei. 3rd ed. Leipzig, 1874, p. 878, calls it probably the original of the copy in the Balbi collection, there ascribed to Filippino Lippi.
Giovanni Morelli. Letter to Niccolò Antinori. July 24, 1879 [published in G. Agosti, "Giovanni Morelli corrispondente di Niccolò Antinori," in Studi e ricerche di collezionismo e museografia Firenze 1820–1920, Pisa, 1985, pp. 72–73], lists it as by Botticelli among works that Giulia Ridolfi is interested in acquiring, giving the price as 10,000 lire.
Ivan Lermolieff [Giovanni Morelli]. Kunstkritische Studien über italienische Malerei. Vol. 1, Die Galerien Borghese und Doria Panfili in Rom. Leipzig, 1890, p. 146 n. 1, calls it the original of the Balbi copy and ascribes it to Botticelli.
Giovanni Morelli. Letter. 1891 [published in "Italienische Malerei der Renaissance im Briefwechsel von Giovanni Morelli und Jean Paul Richter," 1960, p. 580], attributes it to Botticelli.
Hermann Ulmann. Sandro Botticelli. Munich, [1893?], p. 72, attributes it to Botticelli and dates it to the time of the Saint Augustine in the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence (1485–95).
Count Plunkett. Sandro Botticelli. London, 1900, pp. 59–60, 116, calls it a work from the school of Botticelli.
A. Streeter. Botticelli. London, 1903, p. 157, lists it as a work of Botticelli.
Bernhard Berenson. The Drawings of the Florentine Painters. London, 1903, vol. 1, p. 62, attributes it to Botticelli.
Julia Cartwright. The Life and Art of Sandro Botticelli. London, 1904, pp. 136–37, 190, lists it as a work of Botticelli and notes that critics have identified it with the painting mentioned by Antonio Billi [see Ref. 1516–30] and Anonimo Gaddiano [see Ref. 1542–56].
Roger Fry. Letter to Helen Fry. January 11, 1905 [published in Ref. Sutton 1972, vol. 1, letter no. 149, p. 230], describes a meeting with J. P. Morgan and states "he wants to buy Farinola's Botticelli".
Charles Diehl. Botticelli. Paris, [1906], p. 165, lists it as a work by Botticelli.
Herbert P. Horne. Alessandro Filipepi commonly called Sandro Botticelli, Painter of Florence. London, 1908, pp. 174–77, ill., attributes it to Botticelli and refers to "an apocryphal letter of the Blessed Eusebius," first printed in Florence in 1490, as the source of the subject.
Bernhard Berenson. The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance. 3rd ed. New York, 1909, p. 117, attributes it to Botticelli.
Carlo Gamba in Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler. Ed. Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker. Vol. 4, Leipzig, 1910, p. 419, lists it as a late work by Botticelli.
Langton Douglas, ed. A History of Painting in Italy: Umbria, Florence and Siena from the Second to the Sixteenth Century.. By Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle. Vol. 4, Florentine Masters of the Fifteenth Century. London, 1911, p. 270 n. 4, attributes it to Botticelli and calls it the original of the copies in the Balbi collection, Genoa, and Abdy collection, Paris (later Benson collection, London).
Adolfo Venturi. Storia dell'arte italiana. Vol. 7, part 1, La pittura del quattrocento. Milan, 1911, p. 642 n. 1, assigns it to Botticelli's latest period.
Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle. A History of Painting in Italy: Umbria, Florence and Siena from the Second to the Sixteenth Century. Ed. Langton Douglas. Vol. 4, Florentine Masters of the Fifteenth Century. London, 1911, p. 290, call it a replica of the Balbi version, attributed to Filippino Lippi.
Mary Logan Berenson. Draft of a letter to Louis Duveen. March 15, 1912 [published in "Mary Berenson: A Self-Portrait from her Letters & Diaries," ed. B. Strachey and J. Samuels, New York, 1983, p. 177], states that at her husband's request she went to see the picture at Volpi's, where she was told that the owner would not consider anything less than 200,000 francs.
Mary Logan Berenson. Letter to her sister, Alys Russell. March 19, 1912 [published in "Mary Berenson: A Self-Portrait from her Letters & Diaries," ed. B. Strachey and J. Samuels, New York, 1983, p. 177], writes that she has "just had a wire buying a small Botticelli for £8400 (sterling)," probably this painting.
Bernard Berenson. Letter to Duveen. March 28, 1912, attributes it to Botticelli.
M[aurice]. W. B[rockwell]. "Famous Botticelli for America: What the Nation Lost." Morning Post (December 28, 1912) [reprinted in Ref. Horne 1986], reports that it was offered for sale to the National Gallery, London, but rejected [see Ref. Horne 1986].
Catalogue of Italian Pictures at 16, South Street, Park Lane, London and Buckhurst in Sussex collected by Robert and Evelyn Benson. London, 1914, p. 48, under no. 25.
Herbert P. Horne. "The Last Communion of Saint Jerome by Sandro Botticelli." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 10 (March 1915), pp. 52, 54–56, ill. p. 39 (cover), gives an extensive account of the Pugliese family, identifying the patron for whom Botticelli painted this picture as Francesco del Pugliese.
Herbert P. Horne. "Botticelli's "Last Communion of S. Jerome"." Burlington Magazine 28 (November 1915), pp. 45–46, ill. p. 44, publishes Pugliese's will of 1502 that bequeaths the picture to the church of Sant' Andrea da Sommaia; notes that in 1519 this will was replaced by another that makes no mention of the work.
Herbert P. Horne. "The Last Communion of Saint Jerome by Sandro Botticelli." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 10 (April 1915), pp. 72–75, ill. (detail), details the history of the Pugliese family in the fifteenth century.
Herbert P. Horne. "The Last Communion of Saint Jerome by Sandro Botticelli." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 10 (May 1915), pp. 101–5, ill. (detail), discusses the life of Francesco del Pugliese.
Wilhelm von Bode. Sandro Botticelli. Berlin, 1921, pp. 157–58, ill. p. 156, attributes it to Botticelli and considers it the original of the Balbi and ex-Abdy copies.
François Monod. "La galerie Altman au Metropolitan Museum de New-York (1er article)." Gazette des beaux-arts, 5th ser., 8 (September–October 1923), pp. 183–84, ill. p. 185, attributes it to Botticelli and dates it between 1490 and 1502.
Yukio Yashiro. Sandro Botticelli. London, 1925, vol. 1, pp. 186, 210–11, 230, 243; vol. 3, pl. CCXXXIX, calls it a very late work by Botticelli, dating it 1498.
Adolfo Venturi. Botticelli. Paris, 1926, pp. 55, 98, pl. CXXVII, dates it to about the time of the portrait of Lorenzo Lorenzano in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Johnson Collection).
Wilhelm von Bode. Botticelli: des Meisters Werke. Berlin, 1926, ill. p. 73, attributes it to Botticelli and dates it about 1490.
Handbook of the Benjamin Altman Collection. 2nd ed. New York, 1928, pp. 53–55, no. 26, ill.
Raimond van Marle. The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting. Vol. 12, The Renaissance Painters of Florence in the 15th Century: The Third Generation. The Hague, 1931, p. 160, fig. 98, ascribes it to Botticelli and dates it slightly later than the Uffizi Saint Augustine.
Bernhard Berenson. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Oxford, 1932, p. 104.
Lionello Venturi. Italian Paintings in America. Vol. 2, Fifteenth Century Renaissance. New York, 1933, unpaginated, pl. 254, ascribes it to Botticelli and dates it about 1500.
Hans Tietze. Meisterwerke europäischer Malerei in Amerika. Vienna, 1935, p. 327, pl. 52 [English ed., "Masterpieces of European Painting in America," New York, 1939, p. 311, pl. 52], attributes it to Botticelli and dates it about 1490.
Alfred Scharf. Filippino Lippi. Vienna, 1935, p. 117, under no. 142, calls it a replica of the Balbi painting, which he lists as a work by Filippino Lippi.
Richard Offner. Lecture. March 9, 1935, attributes it to Botticelli.
Bernhard Berenson. Pitture italiane del rinascimento. Milan, 1936, p. 90.
Carlo Gamba. Botticelli. Milan, [1936], p. 169, fig. 148 [French ed., (1937), pp. 177–78, fig. 148], dates it in the first half of the 1490s and hesitantly accepts it as the one mentioned in Pugliese's will [see Ref. 1502]; mentions the picture of Saint Jerome referred to by the Anonimo Gaddiano [see Ref. 1542–56], notes that another such work by an anonymous artist was in the collection of Lorenzo de' Medici, and states that several copies of the composition exist.
Lionello Venturi. Botticelli. New York, 1937, ill. p. 22, dates it about 1490.
Jacques Mesnil. Botticelli. Paris, 1938, pp. 158–59, pl. LXXXVII, accepts it as the one mentioned in Pugliese's will.
Alan Burroughs. Art Criticism from a Laboratory. Boston, 1938, p. 81.
Harry B. Wehle. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: A Catalogue of Italian, Spanish, and Byzantine Paintings. New York, 1940, pp. 46–47, ill.
Duveen Pictures in Public Collections of America. New York, 1941, unpaginated, no. 104, ill., dates it about 1490-1500.
Sergio Bettini. Botticelli. Bergamo, 1942, pp. 40, 45, pl. 142 A, attributes it to Botticelli and tentatively dates it about 1503.
Art Treasures of the Metropolitan: A Selection from the European and Asiatic Collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1952, p. 225, no. 88, colorpl. 88.
George Kaftal. Iconography of the Saints in Tuscan Painting. Florence, 1952, col. 529, fig. 607, attributes it to Botticelli.
Josephine L. Allen and Elizabeth E. Gardner. A Concise Catalogue of the European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1954, p. 11.
Giulio Carlo Argan. Botticelli. New York, 1957, p. 124, ill. p. 118 (color), attributes it to Botticelli, dating it about 1490.
Roberto Salvini. Tutta la pittura del Botticelli. Milan, 1958, vol. 2, p. 53, pl. 69, attributes it to Botticelli, dating it shortly after 1490.
Federico Zeri. La Galleria Pallavicini in Roma, catalogo dei dipinti. Florence, 1959, pp. 33–34, under no. 18, publishes a copy by Bartolomeo di Giovanni, identifying the MMA picture as the one painted by Botticelli for Francesco del Pugliese.
Bernard Berenson. I disegni dei pittori fiorentini. Milan, 1961, vol. 2, p. 111, under no. 580 A, vol. 3, fig. 200, considers a Lehman drawing a contemporary copy after our picture.
Bernard Berenson. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Florentine School. London, 1963, vol. 1, p. 37; vol. 2, pl. 1087.
Franco Russoli. "La Galleria Pallavicini a Roma." Tesori d'arte delle grandi famiglie. Ed. Douglas Cooper. Milan, 1966, p. 142.
Federico Zeri with the assistance of Elizabeth E. Gardner. Italian Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Florentine School. New York, 1971, pp. 159–63, ill., list four roughly contemporary copies of the composition and a drawing after it in the Robert Lehman Collection, indicating that the work, though made for a private patron, was well known.
Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1972, pp. 34, 408, 606.
Denys Sutton, ed. Letters of Roger Fry. New York, 1972, vol. 1, p. 230 n. 2 to letter 149 (January 11, 1905).
Bernard Berenson. Looking at Pictures with Bernard Berenson. Ed. Hanna Kiel. New York, 1974, pp. 186–87, ill., Kiel states that it is mentioned in Pugliese's "final testament of 1519" [but see Ref. Horne 1915, Burlington Magazine], and dates it not earlier than 1490, when Buonacorsi's "Life of Saint Jerome" was published.
Roberta Jeanne Marie Olson. "Studies in the Later Works of Sandro Botticelli." PhD diss., Princeton University, 1975, vol. 1, pp. 60–61, 79 n. 22, p. 80 n. 29, pp. 322, 331–32, 372 n. 113, p. 375 n. 137, pp. 399–402, 430–31, 450–51 nn. 22, 23; vol. 2, fig. 34, dates it to about 1491–92, suggesting that the color scheme looks back to Fra Angelico and that the painting may show the influence of contemporary Florentine woodcuts; supplies a list of copies and variations.
Federico Zeri. Italian Paintings in the Walters Art Gallery. Baltimore, 1976, vol. 1, p. 102, under no. 65, mentions it as the source for the Bartolomeo di Giovanni predella panel in the Walters Art Museum (37.428 A), and dates it 1490–95.
Edward Fowles. Memories of Duveen Brothers. London, 1976, pp. 66, 78.
Martin Kemp. "Botticelli's Glasgow 'Annunciation': Patterns of Instability." Burlington Magazine 119 (March 1977), p. 183, lists it among late works.
L. D. Ettlinger and Helen S. Ettlinger. Botticelli. New York, 1977, pp. 89–90, fig. 58.
Alison Luchs. Cestello, a Cistercian Church of the Florentine Renaissance. PhD diss., Johns Hopkins University. New York, 1977, p. 67.
Ronald Lightbown. Sandro Botticelli. Berkeley, 1978, vol. 1, pp. 120–22, pl. 45; vol. 2, pp. 86–87, no. B78, considers it identical with the picture of Saint Jerome owned by Francesco del Pugliese in 1503, notes that its literary source was an epistle of Eusebius, and dates it about 1494–95.
Howard Hibbard. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1980, p. 237, fig. 422.
Everett Fahy. "Babbott's Choices." Apollo, n.s., 115 (April 1982), p. 238.
Keith Christiansen. "Early Renaissance Narrative Painting in Italy." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 41 (Fall 1983), pp. 12–14, fig. 8 (color, overall and detail), dates it probably 1495.
C[hristopher]. L[loyd]. Piero di Cosimo's The Forest Fire. Oxford, 1984, unpaginated, pl. 34.
Caterina Caneva in Herbert P. Horne. Alessandro Filipepi commonly called Sandro Botticelli, Painter of Florence. reprint of 1908 ed. Florence, 1986, vol. 1, pp. 402–4, reprints Ref. Brockwell 1912 with Horne's annotations.
Colin Simpson. Artful Partners: Bernard Berenson and Joseph Duveen. New York, 1986, pp. 135–37, 293 [British ed., "The Partnership: The Secret Association of Bernard Berenson and Joseph Duveen," London, 1987].
Nicoletta Pons. Botticelli: catalogo completo. Milan, 1989, p. 86, no. 118, ill.
Milton Esterow. "Masterpiece Theater." Art News 89 (Summer 1990), pp. 135–36, ill.
Anna Forlani Tempesti. The Robert Lehman Collection. Vol. 5, Italian Fifteenth- to Seventeenth-Century Drawings. New York, 1991, pp. 230–32, fig. 78.1, dates it to "the Savonarolan phase of the artist's later years," between 1491 and 1503, and calls the Lehman drawing (MMA 1975.1.280) a contemporary copy.
Richard Stapleford. "Vasari and Botticelli." Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 39 (1995), pp. 399, 401, 402–3 n. 14, p. 408, suggest that Vasari omitted it from his biography of Botticelli because he had not seen it.
Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 24, ill.
Alessandro Cecchi in L'officina della maniera: Varietà e fierezza nell'arte fiorentina del Cinquecento fra le due repubbliche 1494–1530. Ed. Alessandro Cecchi and Antonio Natali. Exh. cat., Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Venice, 1996, p. 8.
Maria Grazia Ciardi Dupré Dal Poggetto. "I dipinti di palazzo Medici nell'inventario di Simone di Stagio delle Pozze: problemi di committenza e di arredo." La Toscana al tempo di Lorenzo Il Magnifico: politica, economia, cultura, arte, convegno di studi promosso dalle Università di Firenze, Pisa e Siena. Pisa, 1996, vol. 1, pp. 138–39, pl. 85, identifies it with a picture listed in the 1492 Medici inventory as "San Girolamo quando si comunica," rather than with the one mentioned in Pugliese's will, though acknowledges that Botticelli could have made at least two versions of the subject.
Old Master Pictures. Christie's, London. April 25, 2001, p. 138, under no. 106, cites Everett Fahy for observing that it is based on the same cartoon as the version formerly in the Benson and Abdy collections.
David G. Wilkins. "Opening the Doors to Devotion: Trecento Triptychs and Suggestions Concerning Images and Domestic Practice in Florence." Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento and Trecento. Ed. Victor M. Schmidt. Washington, 2002, pp. 383, 392 n. 73.
Meryle Secrest. Duveen: A Life in Art. New York, 2004, pp. 114, 416.
Alessandro Cecchi. Botticelli. Milan, 2005, pp. 318, 329, 363 n. 81, ill. p. 330 (color), dates it probably 1496–97 and believes it was likely commissioned by Francesco di Filippo Pugliese.
Frank Zöllner. Sandro Botticelli. Munich, 2005, pp. 172, 175, 262–63, no. 80, ill. (color), dates it about 1495–1500 based on similarities in the handling of the drapery to that in the Transfiguration triptych (Galleria Pallavicini, Rome) of about 1500.
Davide Gasparotto in Il tondo di Botticelli a Piacenza. Ed. Davide Gasparotto and Antonella Gigli. Milan, 2006, pp. 15–16, fig. 1 (color).
Hans Körner. Botticelli. Cologne, 2006, pp. 368, 402 nn. 899–900, fig. 297, ill. p. 192 (color).
Dennis Geronimus. Piero di Cosimo: Visions Beautiful and Strange. New Haven, 2006, p. 316 n. 13.
Andrea Bayer in Art and Love in Renaissance Italy. Ed. Andrea Bayer. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2008, p. 303.
Kathryn Calley Galitz. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Masterpiece Paintings. New York, 2016, p. 271, no. 158, ill. pp. 165, 271 (color).
Lionello Venturi. Botticelli. London, 2016, p. 44, colorpl. 93.
Frame
The frame is from Florence and dates to about 1480–1500 (see figs. 2–4 above). This small, exquisite tabernacle frame is made of poplar and is water gilded and distinctively carved. The pearl-and-rosette ornament is continued on the arch above the lunette painting. Rosettes with palmettes adorn its crest and sides. The base is carved depicting a water-leaf ornament while the cornice is an acanthus. Further description as well as an attribution to the carver, Giuliano da Majano (1432–1490), can be found in Italian Renaissance Frames (exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1990, p. 43, no. 11). The frame was put on the picture in 1989.
Timothy Newbery with Cynthia Moyer 2015; further information on this frame can be found in the Department of European Paintings files
The frame is catalogued separately: 1989.132.
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 29, no. 10, Part I (June, 1971)
Italian Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vol. 1, Florentine School
Guide to The Metropolitan Museum of Art
European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born before 1865: A Summary Catalogue
"Early Renaissance Narrative Painting in Italy": The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 41, no. 2 (Fall, 1983)
A Concise Catalogue of the European Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art
"The Benjamin Altman Bequest": Metropolitan Museum Journal, v. 3 (1970)
On my trip to Marrakesh I was accompanied by two photographer friends, Thomas and Peter. We knew we wanted to stay in a Riad (traditional courtyard house) near the Jemaa el-Fnaa main square and we knew we didn't want to spend loads. We were lucky enough to find the Riad Dar Limoun which was a bit basic compared to some but was brilliant value at £12 per night each for a triple room. This shot was taken on the roof terrace and features just one of the many guidebooks I took with me...... I always try and take some shots like this as they act as good title shots for slide shows.
Seen in Explore, #192, 18/11/12