(Hemiksem circa 1500 – before 1566 Antwerp)
Caritas Romana (after Andrea del Sarto),
oil on panel, 113.8 x 52.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Collection of Giuseppe Bossi (1810–1891), Vienna;
his sale, Miethke, Vienna, 10 May 1886, lot 76;
Collection August v. Miller-Aichholz (1829–1899), Vienna;
by descent to the present owner

Literature:
T. v. Frimmel, Einige Bilder aus der Sammlung August v. Miller zu Aichholz in Wien, in: Blätter für Gemäldekunde, nos. 6 and 7, p. 129;
F. Winkler, Die altniederländische Malerei, Berlin 1924, p. 297;
F. Antal, Zum Problem des niederländischen Manierismus, Kritische Berichte zur kunstgeschichtlichen Literatur, V, 1929, p. 242, no. 5;
P. Wescher, Einige neue Bilder zum Werk Jan van Hemessens, in: Belvedere, VIII, 1929, p. 39;
P. Wescher, Jan van Hemessen und Jan van Amstel, in: Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, XII, 1970, p. 36;
B. Wallen, Jan van Hemessen: an Antwerp Painter between Reform and Counter-Reform, Ann Arbor 1983, pp. 14, 33, 286, nos. 8 and 342, note 26, fig. 21

Although dated works by Hemessen ranging from 1525 to 1556 establish him as ‘one of the outstanding painters among the Antwerp Romanists, little is known about the facts of his life’ (Wallen, op. cit., p. 9). Hemessen is cited by Vasari as one of the renowned sixteenth-century painters of the Netherlands, many of whom, like Jan van Scorel, Michiel Coxcie, Jan van Calcar and Maerten van Heemskerck, had spent considerable time in Italy. No documentary evidence survives to prove that Hemessen followed suit, but the present picture, a copy after Andrea del Sarto’s fresco in the Chiostro dello Scalzo in Florence, first assigned to Hemessen by F. Winkler, is generally accepted as proof of his travels, probably executed around 1530. The bulging plasticity of the figures, which are bolder and considerably more powerful than those found in his previous work, prefigures the monumental direction of his painting at the beginning of the next decade, displayed by the Penitent Saint Jerome in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon.