Saint Peter the Apostle
Saint Peter the Apostle
- Artist
- Bernardo Zenale
- Artist Dates
- c. 1450/1460-1526
- Artist Nationality
- Italian
- Title
- Saint Peter the Apostle
- Date
- about 1510 - 1512
- Medium
- oil on panel
- Dimensions
- 79.5 x 41.2 cm (31-1/4 x 16-1/4 in)
- K Number
- K1115
- Repository
- Birmingham Museum of Art
- Accession Number
- 1961.111
- Notes
Provenance
(Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi [1878-1955], Rome-Florence); sold to Samuel H. Kress [1863-1955] on 16 June 1937 as Vincenzo Civerchio; gift to the National Gallery of Art in 1939; deaccessioned 1952 and returned to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation; gift to Birmingham Museum of Art in 1961, no. 61.111.
Catalogue Entry
Bernardo Zenale
Saint Peter the Apostle
K1115
Birmingham, Ala., Birmingham Museum of Art (61.111), since 1952.(1) Wood. 32 1/8 x 17 in. (82 x 43 cm.). Fair condition; yellow mantle and the architecture restored in many areas. The variety of attributions suggested for this painting – to Civerchio, to Melone, to Gaudenzio Ferrari, and merely to the Lombard School(2) – is indicative of the attempts made in the last decade to distinguish between the individual styles at the turn of the century in Lombardy. With the recent publication of evidence for Zenale's claim to some of the paintings formerly associated with Civerchio, K1115 falls plausibly into Zenale's oeuvre of about 1510, under the influence of Bramantino.(3) The architectural setting, which indicates that K1115 was once in an upper tier of a polyptych, seems to have been inspired by Bramante's interior of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan. X-ray shows that the artist first planned the saint's head in a more foreshortened pose. A companion panel to K1115 has recently been recognized in the St. Michael from the van Marle Collection and now in a private collection in Switzerland.(4) Provenance: Contini Bonacossi, Florence. Kress acquisition, 1937 –exhibited: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (477), 1941-51.(5)
References
(1) Catalogue by W. E. Suida, 1952, p. 45, and 1959, pp. 62 f., as Gaudenzio Ferrari. (2) In ms. opinions K1115 has been attributed to Civerchio by B. Berenson, R. Longhi, and F. M. Perkins (tentatively), to Gaudenzio Ferrari by A. Venturi, and to a Lombard master (possibly Altobello Melone) by G. Fiocco. W. E. Suida (in Bollettino della Società Piemontese di Archeologia e di Belle Arti, vols. VIII-XI, 1954-57, pp. 82 f.) attributes it to Gaudenzio, c. 1514. (3) M. Ferrari, in Paragone, no. 127, 1960, pp. 47ff., and no. 157, 1963, pp. 22 f., attributes K1115 to Zenale. (4) Ferrari, in Paragone, no. 211, 1967, pp. 22 f., fig. 35a. (5) Preliminary Catalogue, 1941, p. 42, as Civerchio.