Saint Jerome

Girolamo Romanino painted this Saint Jerome for a Brescian church or private patron around 1520, depicting the scholar-saint in the wilderness setting that was standard for Jerome's penitential aspect. Romanino's Jerome figures combine the rough physical reality of an ascetic in a harsh landscape with the intellectual dignity of the greatest biblical scholar in the Western tradition—the translator of the Hebrew and Greek scriptures into the Latin Vulgate that remained the Church's authoritative text. His characteristic warm palette and confident figure construction give Jerome both physical presence and spiritual intensity. The lion lying at the penitent's feet—the traditional symbol of Jerome's wilderness companionship—is depicted with the same direct naturalism that Romanino brought to all his animal and figure subjects.

The panel displays Romanino's bold Brescian manner with vigorous brushwork, warm rich color, and the powerful physical presence that characterizes his mature figure painting.