Antonello da Messina

St. Jerome in His Study is an oil painting on a wooden panel that measures only 18 x 14 1/8" (46 x 37 cm.) and is in the collection of the National Gallery in London. The scene is viewed through a framing stone arch which serves as a window to the interior space in which Jerome sits at his desk in what Hartt says is "apparently an alcove of a monastic library" (365). The style of the arch is Spanish Gothic and this, like the majolica tiles of the floor, was a typical characteristic of Sicilian architecture. But the arch also affords a view of a very different interior and its style matches neither the Romanesque clerestory windows above nor the plain rectang

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but the two major types of composition feature him either as a cardinal-scholar at work in his study or as a penitent hermit living in the desert. Both of these depictions are based on his biography, but he did not become a popular subject until the late fourteenth century. A popular book on Jerome was published by a scholar, Johannes Andreae, at the University of Bologna in the mid-fourteenth and in it the author "stressed not only the saint's learning and piety" (he was the translator of the standard Latin version of the Bible) but, "with far less reason, his prominence in the church as a cardinal" (Meiss 189). As Hall says, the office of cardinal "did not then exist," yet the popularity of the idea ensured that the cardinal's hat became "his almost invariable attribute" (168-69). Jerome also spent four years in the Syrian desert, fasting and praying and with "no companions but scorpions and wild beasts" (Jerome, quoted in Meiss 190). This aspect of his life was well known from his accounts in his Letters, which were very widely read throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Jerome was not depicted as a penitent, however, prior to 1400 and this new version of the saint was most common in northern Italy following the
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

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