Lot Essay
Girolamo da Santacroce was the founder and most important painter in a family of artists active in the Veneto from the early sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth century. Taking his name from the village of Santa Croce, now part of S. Pellegrino near Bergamo, Girolamo entered the workshop of Gentile Bellini in Venice in 1503, remaining there until Gentile's death in 1507. He was a disciple of the Bellini family for the rest of his life, first as an active member of Giovanni Bellini's circle before starting his own workshop in Venice in 1517, just after Giovanni's death.
The present work is a hitherto unrecorded version of the Kress collection painting now in the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago (F. Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian School XV-XVI Century, 1968, p. 192, fig. 438) which has sometimes been attributed to Moretto da Brescia or to Moroni. The distant hills, the draughtsmanship of the King's hands, his morphology, and the treatment of his robes are closely paralleled in Girolamo's late work circa 1540-50 when a slight mannerist tendancy is coupled with his faithful Bellinesque style.
Much legend accompanies the biblical account of David, the shepherd boy who became King of Israel. He was a bandit chief and a warrior, a musician and a poet who was believed to be the author of the Psalms. As a statesman, he was responsible for making Israel into a united kingdom with Jerusalem as its capital.
The present work is a hitherto unrecorded version of the Kress collection painting now in the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago (F. Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian School XV-XVI Century, 1968, p. 192, fig. 438) which has sometimes been attributed to Moretto da Brescia or to Moroni. The distant hills, the draughtsmanship of the King's hands, his morphology, and the treatment of his robes are closely paralleled in Girolamo's late work circa 1540-50 when a slight mannerist tendancy is coupled with his faithful Bellinesque style.
Much legend accompanies the biblical account of David, the shepherd boy who became King of Israel. He was a bandit chief and a warrior, a musician and a poet who was believed to be the author of the Psalms. As a statesman, he was responsible for making Israel into a united kingdom with Jerusalem as its capital.