The Digitalisation Project Castle Huis Bergh is the intellectual property of the Stichting Musick’s Monument. Ing Hans Meijer was responsible for the technical realisation; Dr Willem Kuiper for the scholarly input. Thanks are also due to the Anjer Cultuurfonds Gelderland; the Stichting de Verenigde Stichtingen “De Armenkorf” in Terborg and “Het Gasthuis te Silvolde”; Mrs P. Tijdink-Hermsen; Mrs L.J.C. Meijer-Kroonder; and the Giese family.
Panel
Crivelli, Vittore (ca.1440-1501)
Italy, Venece
St. Antonius of Padua
1481
This portrait of Saint Anthony of Padua was originally one of seventeen parts of an altarpiece, a so-called polyptich, made in 1481 for the Italian Euffriducci family. The different parts were sold separately, two of them in 1925 to Huis Bergh: portraits of Saint Bernardine of Siena and Saint Anthony of Padua. We can identify Anthony by his appearance of a young man, the book and the lily he is holding, a symbol of purity. Take a close look at the lily, and note how this fifteenth-century painted flower could very well be mistaken for a nineteenth-century Jugendstil ornament. The hand of the artist Crivelli is visible in the use of stucco details: the halo surrounding the Saint’s head and the knobs on the book he is carrying. Normally, haloes were made by applying a disc of gold leaf on a panel and pressing stamps on it. Crivelli, however, used stucco for the halo instead of gold leaf and stamps. Note how he did use stamped gold leaf on the background of the portrait. In Crivelli’s time, books like this one - problably a bible - had knobs on the cover for a reason. They protected the usually very richly decorated and therefore vulnerable cover when the book was lying open on a table.
