St. Jerome

Vicino da Ferrara's Saint Jerome at the Gemäldegalerie Berlin, painted around 1480, depicts the scholar-saint and translator of the Bible in the penitent pose — kneeling before a crucifix in the desert, striking his breast with a stone — that was his most popular visual type in the fifteenth century. Saint Jerome was one of the most frequently depicted saints in Renaissance art, his combination of scholarship, asceticism, and dramatic desert penitence making him a compelling figure for humanist patrons who identified with his intellectual labors. Vicino da Ferrara was a minor painter in the orbit of the Este court at Ferrara, contributing to the distinctive Ferrarese school that combined the influence of Cosimo Tura's taut, enamel-hard style with elements absorbed from the Paduan tradition of Mantegna. The Gemäldegalerie Berlin holds one of the world's finest collections of European Old Masters with particular strength in Italian Renaissance painting, providing the comparative context needed to assess the contribution of minor Ferrarese practitioners like Vicino. The egg tempera panel technique of this work — painstaking in its layered application — was characteristic of Ferrarese painting before oil became dominant in the last decades of the century.

Tempera and oil on panel demonstrating the techniques characteristic of Early Renaissance painting. The work shows competent handling of its subject matter within established artistic conventions.