(Siegen 1577–1640 Antwerp)
Saint Jerome in the desert,
oil on panel, 107 x 79 cm, framed

Provenance:
(possibly) sale, Sotheby’s, London, 22 February 1967 (as Rubens);
Private collection, Belgium, since the 1990s

Literature:
H. Vlieghe, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, Part VIII, Saints, London/New York 1972, vol. I, p. 99, under no. 121, copy (1)

The present painting is a workshop copy after the original painting depicting Saint Jerome in the Wilderness by Peter Paul Rubens in the Gemäldegalerie, Dresden (inv. no. 955).

The composition exhibits the influence of Titian’s painting of the same subject, which is now in the Pinacoteca Brera in Milan, although Rubens must have seen in its original Venetian setting – in the Church of Santa Maria Nuova. Rubens visited Italy between 1600 and 1608, filling sketchbooks with studies of antique statues. These Greek and Roman originals he adapted to his own style, imbuing them with greater dynamism. One can see several quotations from ancient sculpture in the seemingly living, breathing figures in his works. The pose of Saint Jerome in both the present panel and the Dresden picture is based on a statue known as the Dying Seneca in the Louvre, Paris (inv. no. MA 1354), which Rubens drew from the left profile. Hans Vlieghe states that the Dresden painting ‘displays the cool classicism typical of Rubens’s work from around 1612–15’.

The thirteenth-century Legenda Aurea popularised the episode of Saint Jerome’s life portrayed by Rubens, as told in the epistle of Saint Eusebius. Jerome spent several years meditating in the Syrian desert. The traditional attributes of Jerome are shown here: the skull symbolising mortification, his books, and the lion whom he befriended by pulling a thorn from its paw.