Title

Saint Ambrose at His Study

Generic classification

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Object history

This sculpture, St. Ambrose in his studio, had to form a group with another similar one, also in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York: St. Jerome in his studio . Both come from the collection of the banker and collector John Pierpont Morgan. In the first descriptions of that collection, when it arrived at the Metropolitan Museum, the reference to its provenance was as follows: "...two French Wood-carvings of the second half of the fifteenth century, representing two of the Latin Church Fathers, Saint Jerome with his lion and either Saint Ambrose or Saint Augustine (fig. 82) The Fathers are seated at their Reading desks..."(The Pierpont Morgan Wing, p. 146). The pieces were acquired by Morgan from Georges Hoentschel, an antique dealer based in Paris.

Now, we have two sculptures similar in style and composition in the Marès Museum in Barcelona, a museum that was born from the donation of the collection formed by the sculptor and collector Frederic Marès (1893-1991): St. Augustine ( 75 x 71 x 28 cm. Inv. No.: MFM 1139) and St. Gregory ( 81 x 66 x 25 cm. Inv. No.: MFM 1141); like the sculptures kept at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Fathers of the Church are represented at their desk and with a model of the Church - we are grateful for the reference provided by Ramón Pérez de Castro (University of Valladolid). However, they offer differences with respect to those of New York: such as the top of the chair on which they are seated; in addition, those of the Marès Museum are slightly larger in size, without a base; the finishes of the clothing also show variations, as well as the base or the presence of the cushions in the Barcelona sculptures, which are not found in those of New York. Frederic Marés, with respect to the pieces in his collection, alluded to their "Tamara" origin. Thus, in the catalog published in 1979 it was noted: "Representation of two ecclesiastical figures in his study library. A Pope with his tiara and a Bishop seated on two footstools that stand out against an openwork architectural background. Curious interpretations that show technical mastery in the domain of the gouge; work of a workshop from Burgos. They lack polychromy. They come from Támara. XV century. They measure: 80 x 66 and 76 x 73 cm (Marès Museum, 1979).

Different, but with similarities, would they come from the Palencia town of Támara de Campos? Its main temple, San Hipólito, of royal patronage, enjoyed a period of splendor at the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th century; important masters of the artistic focus of Burgos worked there. Two important pieces of furniture from this period were lost, for different reasons: the old choir stalls and the old main altarpiece. From this period, as far as wood carving is concerned, the church still preserves the door leading to the choir, dating from 1492, the year in which the conquest of Granada took place, which is why the pomegranate appears in the ornamentation accompanying the coat of arms of the Catholic Monarchs (Chico López, p. 106-107).

The truth is that a good part of the construction of the temple corresponded to that period between the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th century; however, in 1568 the tower collapsed. According to the preserved documentation, it seems that the collapse affected six chapels of the Gospel nave and the area where the old choir stalls were located. For this reason it was necessary to commission a new choir stalls, of which the account books give news from 1580. As far as the old main altarpiece is concerned, in 1689 the parish documentation reports the commissioning of a new one by the bishop of Palencia, Fray Alonso de Laurencio de Pedraza: "many neighbors of this town have begged his Lordship to order a new altarpiece to be made on the main altar with Solomonic columns, with its tabernacle of the same columns, where the patron saint S. Hippolytus martyr is placed.... Hippolytus martyr... And being good enough, his illustriousness commands and ordered that the steward of the church go to the city of Villada and be with Santiago Carnicero and recognize how the paintings that the main altar has and the one it has today can be accommodated..." (Visit of the year 1689 folios 342-343. Chico López, p. 207). Indeed, the new altarpiece, according to the taste of the late seventeenth century, came to replace the old one. That altar must have had paintings -ifwe attend to such documentary reference-; and perhaps sculptures, because in the temple there are still four high reliefs (100 x 100 cm.) with scenes of the life of San Hipólito, that were destined to another altarpiece of the temple: the one of the Virgin of the Soledad; today they look with modern repainting. Weise attributed them to the workshop of Felipe Bigarny, Azcárate found them close to the reliefs of the choir loft of the cathedral of Burgos, while Portela considered them the work of Francisco Colonia (Portela, p. 62). Works, in short, of the Burgos school of that period, of great quality, undoubtedly due to the patronage exercised by the Catholic Monarchs over the church; they must have been part of an altarpiece dedicated to the life of the titular saint of the temple, perhaps the old main altarpiece.

Other pieces of the same altarpiece remained in storage until they were finally sold at public auction. This was reported in the parish documentation in 1697: "to put the altarpiece that has been made new, the old one that had the said church was taken down and since it should have been sold (sic) as well as paintings, as well as everything else that could be sold and has not been done and has been placed in a chapel ... I command the said priests and steward to put and remove in public the said residue of the altarpiece selling it and auctioning it to the person or persons who give the most for it". And so it was, the remains of the old main altarpiece that were stored were sold and 1061 reals were obtained for what was still left of it, some of whose pieces remained among neighbors of the town and were dispersed little by little (Chico López, p. 119-122).

To these losses were added others that occurred during the 19th century, since the French invasion and the War of Independence also caused damage to the patrimony of Támara, and of course the consequences of the disentailment measures that mainly affected the Benedictine monastery of San Miguel in the same locality. The town's patrimony also suffered significant damage in the 20th century, due to the sale of works of art and even some robberies -Erikthe Belgian carried out robberies in Astudillo and in Támara de Campos between 1979 and 1981-. In short, the dispersion of artistic pieces from the locality has been remarkable. The sculpture of the titular saint himself, Saint Hippolytus, from the old altarpiece, is now conserved in Hearst Castle, San Simeon (California), after being sold in New York in 1927. Several paintings from an altarpiece of St. Hippolytus are preserved in the National Museum of Art of Catalonia: St. Apollonia, Lucia and Barbara and another martyr saint, Visitation, St. Joachim and St. Anne in front of the Golden Door. Virgin with Child and St. John the Baptist child, Annunciation, Epiphany, Adoration of the shepherds, St. Margaret of Antioch, St. Agatha, St. Ursula and St. Agnes. In addition to these seven panels, there are others scattered in other collections. And not only San Hipólito el Real has suffered successive losses, see also the case of the old Benedictine monastery of San Miguel, in the same locality; from its temple, for example, the Marès Museum of Barcelona conserves two images from a 13th century Calvary: Virgin and Saint John.

Could these sculptures, St. Ambrose in his studio and St. Jerome in his studio , have been part of the altarpiece that was dismantled and sold, or of the decorative ensemble of the old choir, affected by the collapse of the tower? Did these sculptures come from Tamara?

Description

The carving preserves some traces of paint, vestiges that suggest that it must have been polychromed. On the other hand, the tracery that decorated the desk and the model of the temple that accompanies the saint have lost a large part of their openwork motifs. It is a work related to the Hispano-Flemish sculptural models of the Burgos artistic centre from around 1500 and the first years of that century.

Locations

• Unknown date

  municipality

  From Támara de Campos?, Támara de Campos (Spain)

• 1911

  private collection

  Georges Hoentschel, Paris (France) *

• 1911 - 1917

  private collection

  John Pierpont Morgan, New York (United States) *

• 1917 - present

  museum

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (United States)