Saint Ambrose
c. 1796–1799
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
unframed: 190 × 113 cm · framed: 148.7 × 225.3 × 10.3 cm
Classification
Painting
Department
European Painting and Sculpture
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund
Accession Number
1969.23
Tags
About this artwork
This work belongs to a series depicting Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory, key figures of early Catholicism. Saint Ambrose (about AD 340–391), the bishop of Milan, resolved important theological conflicts within the church and worked effectively with advocates of Roman paganism. The low viewpoint and large scale suggest that this painting hung high on the wall of a religious institution, but its original location remains unknown. In the late 1700s, Spain expelled all the Jesuits and sparke...