Saint Jerome

Saint Jerome Writing is one of the last paintings Caravaggio produced during his Roman period, which is generally dated to the years before his exile to Malta in 1606. It shows Saint Jerome, a Doctor of the Church and a popular subject in religious art, absorbed in his reading. His outstretched arm rests beside a quill, and it has been suggested that the saint is shown at work translating the Vulgate, the Latin version of the Bible associated with him.

The scene takes place in a bare setting. Instead of the lion that traditionally accompanies him, a motif that came from a medieval legend, Caravaggio presents Jerome as a scholar surrounded by books and a writing desk. Among the objects, a skull serves as a memento mori, a reminder of the brevity of life. The composition is pared down to essentials, with strong contrasts of light that focus attention on the figure and his act of writing, a feature typical of the master's religious painting.

The dating rests mainly on the account of the seventeenth-century biographer Giovanni Pietro Bellori, although Denis Mahon proposes an earlier date, between 1602 and 1604. According to Bellori, the work was commissioned by Cardinal Scipione Borghese, yet it is not mentioned in a 1613 poem describing the Borghese collection, so it may have entered it later. For a long time it was attributed to Jusepe de Ribera, and its authorship has been debated since.

The painting also has an unusual history. In 1984 it was stolen from the co-cathedral of Saint John in Valletta, where another version of the scene is kept, and the canvas was cut from its frame. Two years later it was recovered after a ransom had been demanded, and the damaged work needed restoration before it could be displayed again.

Painter

Caravaggio

Date

1606

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

116 × 153 cm

Museum

Galleria Borghese, Paris

Movement

Italian Baroque painting

Genre

religious art

Depicts

Jerome

Share:FacebookWhatsApp