, London Savoldo was born in
Brescia, but little is known about his early years. Some sources claim that he was known as
Girolamo Bresciano. By 1506 he was in
Parma, and by 1508 he had joined the
Florentine painters' guild. In this period he finished the
Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Augsburg), the
Elijah Fed by the Raven (
National Gallery of Art,
Washington), and a
Deposition. and
Saint Paul Hermit'',
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice In 1515 he painted the
Portrait of a Clad Warrior, traditionally identified as
Gaston of Foix. Also from the same period is his
Temptation of Saint Anthony. In this work, which is in the
Timken Museum of Art, Savoldo shows the saint with his hands clasped in prayer, fleeing from a hellish vision into a daylight pastoral landscape. Like other northern Italian painters of the time, Savoldo was interested in Flemish painting, particularly the nightmarish monsters of the
Flemish artist
Hieronymus Bosch, which influenced his depiction of the tormentors in this work. As the saint flees, his hands point to a monastery, a reminder that he was the father of
Christian monasticism. These works were appreciated by the commissioners from Venice, where Savoldo relocated before 1521. On June 15, 1524, Savoldo signed a contract for an altarpiece for the church of San Domenico in
Pesaro (now in the
Pinacoteca di Brera,
Milan). In 1527, he completed a
Saint Jerome for the Brescian family Averoldi, probably the depiction of that saint in the
National Gallery,
London. From the 1530s dates a Nativity at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, which seems influenced by the lambent painting of the same subject by his contemporary,
Correggio. In 1533 Savoldo painted a
Madonna with Four Saints in the church of
Santa Maria in Organo (in
Verona), while in 1537–1538 he executed the altarpiece for the main altar of Santa Croce,
Brescia (destroyed during
World War II). From 1540 are the two
Nativity paintings for the church of
San Giobbe of Venice and the church of San Barnaba of Brescia, as well as the famous
Magdalene painting. Savoldo's students in Venice included
Paolo Pino. Savoldo may have spent some years of his life in Milan, and is known to have made paintings for
Francesco II Sforza, Duke of Milan, in 1534. Savoldo had a Dutch wife. The exact date of his death is not known: in 1548 he was cited as still living in Venice, though
vecchione ("very old"). After his death, he was almost entirely forgotten for three centuries. A rediscovery of his oeuvre began in the mid-nineteenth century; the art historian Creighton Gilbert says that Savoldo was "one of the last artists to be raised to the ranks of the major High Renaissance masters". ==Overview==