Panel

Girolamo di Benvenuto (1470-1524)

Italy, Siena

St Jerome ca. 1508

Was part of a large altarpiece which belonged to the Ramboux collection and is currently missing. St Jerome as a penitent. Part of a predella. Features production: son/pupil of Benvenuto di Giovanni, whose coloration and drawing he adopted. From the Ramboux collection in Cologne, as is the altarpiece of which it was a part. Schematic are the stiff pleating and the cylindrical plastic (pleats). His composition contains elements of Umbrian (Perugino) painting. His art shows frequent signs of the decline of the Sienese painting tradition. Three of his signed and dated works (1498, 1508 and 1515) survive. He does not look like a very cheerful man, this Saint Jerome, and in his own time (4th/5th century AD) apparently he wasnt: his numerous writings (letters, sermons, polemics, treatises etc.) reveal him to be irritable, jealous, suspicious and over-sensitive. He was also, however, the highly intelligent man who produced the Latin translation of the Bible that was used until the 19th century and came to be known as the Vulgate. Jeromes head is crowned by a halo, and the man was a saint indeed, living as a pious ascetic for many years. He is said to have frequently pounded his chest with a stone in order to withstand temptation. His portrait is clearly a work of the early renaissance, since the background is no longer covered with gold leaf, but atmospheric, and the halo is more naturalistic than the golden, two-dimensional discs that medieval artists used to indicate holiness.