Important painting by Giorgio Vasari sold at auction for 800,000 euros

An important work by Giorgio Vasari (Arezzo, 1511 - Florence, 1573), the Temptations of St. Jerome, was purchased at auction yesterday by Pandolfini for the record sum of 800 thousand euros, representing a world record for a work by Vasari at auction. The painting started from an estimate of 300-500 thousand euros and was lot number 8 in the auction Masterpieces from Italian Collections held yesterday at the auction house’s headquarters in Florence, at Palazzo Ramirez-Montalvo.

That of the Temptations is a subject tackled several times by the artist from Arezzo, and the painting sold by Pandolfini is a replica of the masterpiece, dated 1541, now kept at the Galleria Palatina in Palazzo Pitti, so much so that Vasari himself, in his Lives, recalls at least two replicas of the work, executed one in 1545 for messer Tommaso Cambi and the other in 1547 for Monsignor de’ Rossi: “at the same time,” we read in the Giuntina edition of Vasari’s text, “I made for Messer Ottaviano de’ Medici a Venus et a Leda with cartoons by Michelagnolo; et in a large painting a Saint Jerome as much as the living, in penitence, who, contemplating the death of Christ before him on the cross, beats his breast to detach from his mind the things of Venus and the temptations of the flesh that sometimes molested him, even though he was in the woods and in solitary and wild places, according to what he himself largely tells of himself. For which to demonstrate, he made a Venus who with Love in her arms flees from that contemplation, having the Giuoco in her hand and the arrows and the turcasso having fallen to him on the ground, without which the thunderbolts, thrown by Cupid toward that Saint, return broken toward her and some that fall are brought back with their beaks by the doves of it Venus.”

The work struck by Pandolfini is identical in size to the one in the Pitti Palace, and comes from the Graetz collection at the Castello di Vincigliata in Fiesole. Other replicas are held at the Art Institute of Chicago and the City Art Gallery in Leeds. For Pandolfini’s work, commissioning and date are not known, nor are the events before the 20th century. The work was first published in 1960 by Mina Gregori. The Pitti Palace panel, on the other hand, as we learn from Vasari’s text above, was commissioned by Ottaviano de’ Medici, who wanted a painting with the theme of the power of prayer succeeding in overcoming earthly temptations. Precisely because of the success of his invention, Vasari replicated the subject several times.

Image: Giorgio Vasari, Temptations of Saint Jerome (oil on panel, 165 x 117 cm)

Important painting by Giorgio Vasari sold at auction for 800,000 euros

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