 |
| The Oolographer (In His Study)- Detail Oil on Aluminium 700 X 525mm © JJ Delvine2018 |
This exquisite painting by Antonello da Messina of St Jerome in his Study hangs in Room 55 of the National
Gallery. I have a habit of stopping by to visit old friends if I am in the area
and this is one of them.
It is said Antonello was spurred on to make this painting when he
saw a Van Eyck of St. Jerome - perhaps the one now in Detroit or something like
it. I must have first noticed the Antonello in a magazine and I cut it out and
put in up in my room as a teenager. Or perhaps not. The curious thing is I
can’t find this cutting (and I seem to have kept all the others), and that
suggests that this memory might be entirely fictitious.
Antonello’s story as told by Vasari - how he then went to Flanders
to wrest the secret alchemy of oil paint from the old man - falls apart on the
simple truth that Van Eyck was dead before Antonello reached his teens. But
this painting shows better perhaps than any other how truly innovative in his
own right Antonello was - and makes you realise the impact he must have had on
his contemporaries. So, in that respect Vasari wasn’t wrong.
One revelation I got in painting my version was the shifting focus
of the perspective - now real, now symbolic - hovering between different
requirements of the architecture and importance of the symbolism of the book.
In truth, there is a feel of trial and error, of micro-adjustments towards what
looks right rather than perspectival orthodoxy. I'm not sure he was too
bothered, most likely he made it up as he went along.
St. Jerome is one of my namesakes - along with the Prophet
Jeremiah and my personal favourite Hieronymus Bosch. Bookishness and a fondness
for anachronisms, hermitic and hermetic tendencies, melancholy and the inward
journey, all seem Hieronymite attributes that I share with the above. In a
sense these are then part of the organising principal of the work flowing between Antonello and myself - how a hovering focus plays across glimpses and
can never quite settle.
There is one last overlap
between Antonello and myself - he died of Pleurisy aged 49 which is the age I
was when I began this painting.
