In "A Meditation on Saint Jerome - Eric Fonteneau d’après Ribera", Colnaghi brings together two major paintings by Jusepe de Ribera (Xàtiva 1591 - 1652 Naples) and a new suite of black chalk drawings by contemporary artist Eric Fonteneau that respond to Ribera’s most contemplative treatments of Saint Jerome.
At the centre are three commanding, close-cropped heads; around them, smaller sheets intimately focus on attributes - hands, skulls, manuscripts - through which thought and penance are made visible. Fonteneau’s draughtsmanship is disciplined and poised, his chiaroscuro clear and resonant. Rather than imitating Ribera, these drawings read his construction of light and psychology, now placed in direct conversation with the two large canvases on view. The installation rewards slow looking and underscores the continued relevance of Old Master pictorial thinking.
Eric Fonteneau (b. 1954, Cholet, France) is a French artist based between Paris and Nantes. Trained in Fine Art at Rennes, he privileges drawing for its precision and relation to writing. Since the 1980s he has developed monumental landscape drawings and installable environments such as La chambre des cartes and La Bibliothèque. His work has been shown internationally, from San Francisco and New York to Cologne, Tokyo, and Madrid, and includes projects at the Centre Pompidou, Musée de l’Abbaye Sainte-Croix, and the Petit Palais. Fonteneau’s practice ranges from folded maps to punctured-paper “atlases” and portraits of explorers and prophets, and his works are held in public and private collections across Europe and the US.