Elijah Fed by the Raven

The work, titled Elijah Fed by the Raven, was probably commissioned around 1510 by a Carmelite monastery in Brescia, Italy, and later entered the Manfrin family collection in Venice. It passed by inheritance to Pietro Manfrin, then to Giulia‑Giovanna Manfrin‑Plattis, and after her death was divided between her sons, with the painting sold at Hôtel Drouot in Paris in 1870 (no. 73) to Charles A. Loeser. Loeser’s heirs transferred it to Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi in Florence, who sold it in 1954 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation; the foundation gifted the work to the National Gallery of Art in 1961. The painting is dated to 1510 and executed in oil on panel transferred to canvas.

Elijah Fed by the Raven is held by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., as part of the Samuel H. Kress Collection. The painting entered the Kress Foundation in 1954 via Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi of Florence, and was gifted to the NGA in 1961. Its documented provenance traces back to a possible commission around 1510 by a Carmelite monastery in Brescia, after which it entered the Manfrin collection in Venice.

It passed through inheritance to Pietro Manfrin and then Giulia-Giovanna Manfrin-Plattis, before being divided between Marquis Antonio-Maria Plattis and Bortolina Plattis, widow of Baron Sardagna. The work was sold at the Plattis sale at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris on 13 May 1870 (lot 73). Charles A. Loeser acquired it in Florence from the 1890s; it later passed to his daughter Mrs. Ronald Calnan in Milan, before its 1954 sale to Contini Bonacossi and subsequent acquisition by the Kress Foundation.

The painting is a religious work by Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo dated to around 1510 that depicts the biblical figure Elijah; its devotional subject reflects early‑16th‑century Carmelite patronage and later entered a distinguished collection lineage that led to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Scholarship on Savoldo’s oeuvre places this piece within the artist’s broader practice of combining Venetian coloristic intensity with Lombard narrative clarity, and its inclusion in the Samuel H. Kress Collection has sustained academic interest in its stylistic and iconographic qualities.

The painting entered the Samuel H. Kress Collection in 1954 after its sale by Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, having previously passed through the Manfrin family and a Carmelite monastery in Brescia. It now resides in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., where it is displayed as part of the Kress Collection and studied as a 1510 oil on panel by Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo depicting the biblical figure Elijah. Its documented provenance and inclusion in a major public collection have contributed to scholarly discussions of Savoldo’s late Venetian style and the iconography of Elijah in Renaissance art.

Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo's Elijah Fed by the Raven, painted around 1510, is an oil on panel work later transferred to canvas. This religious painting illustrates a moment from the Old Testament, depicting the prophet Elijah receiving sustenance from a raven. The composition emphasizes a quiet, contemplative scene, characteristic of Savoldo's approach to sacred narratives.