St. Jerome and a bishop

This panel depicting Saint Jerome and a bishop, produced around 1512 by the Master of the Holy Kinship the Elder — a Cologne artist named for his altarpiece of the Holy Family — demonstrates the persistence of late Gothic devotional conventions in the German Rhineland well into the sixteenth century. Jerome, the great Church Father and translator of the Bible into Latin, was frequently paired with other ecclesiastical saints as part of altarpiece wing programs. The Bavarian State Painting Collections hold numerous such panels, which document the rich tradition of panel painting in the German-speaking lands during a period when Italian Renaissance influence was beginning to penetrate north of the Alps, though artists like this master were only slowly adapting to the new visual language.

Cologne-influenced panel painting with gold-ground conventions giving way to a modest spatial setting. Figure types retain the expressive linearity of late Gothic tradition, with hierarchic scale and frontal presentation distinguishing sacred from attendant figures.