Saint Jerome lived in the 4th century, sometime between 345 and 420. He was a monk who, believing himself unworthy and full of sin, rejected society and took a vow of solitude to become a hermit in the Syrian desert. Jerome spent two or three years performing penance. It is thought that he lived in a cave which also housed the library he had brought with him. In art history there are primarily two ways in which the saint is depicted; either penitent in the wilderness from his years spent in the desert, or as a scholar at his desk in his studio drawn from the remaining period of his life.
In order to become ordained as a saint, a person has to have performed a miracle. Jerome’s miracle relates to the legend of the lion. According to this account, Jerome was responsible for removing a thorn from a lion’s paw: ‘St. Jerome went boldly to meet him, as though the lion were his guest. The lion, because it could not speak, silently held out its wounded paw to the holy man’ [from Saint Jerome in the Renaissance, p. 111]. The legend becomes even more remarkable when, after the removal of the thorn, the lion becomes completely domesticated and develops into Jerome’s devoted companion. Hence a lion nearly always appears in depictions with the saint.
Albrecht Dürer’s St. Jerome in His Study (1514) is regarded as one of the most important depictions of the saint. It is also the work which is probably best known in the Library’s collection, being the most reproduced. It even appeared in the cover design of the University’s Treasures book, published in 2003. It shows the scholar at work, which in turn reflects the work and the inhabitants of the University. The collection includes a number of images of Saint Jerome, many of which are by celebrated old master artists; besides Dürer there are prints by Lucas van Leyden, Jusepe de Ribera and the Carracci brothers.
Dürer’s image, like many of his prints, is packed with symbolism. Dürer was the first artist to include a skull in an image with Saint Jerome and many subsequent versions also include this symbol for transience and death. The candle and hourglass echo this theme, along with the gourd hanging from the ceiling, which represents the gourd of Jonah. In the Bible the gourd grew and then died in the same night, therefore also representing mortality. The lion sleeping with the dog demonstrates how the lion has revoked its former life as a wild animal and is content to stay in a room with creatures that would ordinarily be its prey. Jerome and the lion have become symbols for abstinence and devotion. The room in the print is drawn with exact mathematical perspective and is thought to be based on the room of either Dürer’s friend Willibald Pirckheimer, a Nuremberg humanist, or the library in Erfurt.
Lucas van Leyden’s version, St. Jerome (1521) employs the use of the skull invented by Dürer. The proof of the lion’s domesticity is seen when the animal licks the monk’s foot. Lions in the Renaissance are a symbol used to represent someone who has withdrawn from the world and a person who keeps vigil at night, as it was thought that lions always kept their eyes open. Notice that even though the lion is asleep in Dürer’s image, its eyes are open. Tame lions in Christianity are said to symbolise a victory of righteousness over sinfulness.
Saint Jerome (1600–1602) by Agostino Carracci is his best-known work. The artist died before its completion and the print in the collection was reissued as a complete version by his student Francesco Brizio. The scene is set during Jerome’s period in the desert and shows the lion in the upper left of the image, while Saint Jerome, captured in a moment of religious ecstasy before his cave, is about to castigate himself with a rock. To the lower right of the image is seen another symbol which is often associated with the saint, a cardinal’s hat. That Jerome was a cardinal is one of the most frequent erroneous beliefs portrayed in the visual arts. Dürer also includes the cardinal’s hat on the rear wall of his image.
Other misconceptions about Jerome reflected in the images are that he befriended the lion in the wilderness when, according to his biographers, the lion came into his monastery in Bethlehem where he was giving a lecture. Jerome was actually in his twenties when he went to live in the desert, however, he is never depicted as a young man, always a sage old man. Another print in the collection by Carracci, which is after Correggio, Madonna and Child with Saint Jerome and the Magdalen (1586), shows Jerome with figures who were said to have lived hundreds of years before the saint was even alive. These images which venerate marvellous aspects of Jerome form what is known as the cult of Jerome.
References and further reading
Herbert Friedmann, A bestiary for Saint Jerome: Animal symbolism in European religious art, Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1980.
Eugene F. Rice, Saint Jerome in the Renaissance, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985.
Grete Ring, ‘St. Jerome extracting the thorn from the lion’s foot’, in Art Bulletin, vol. 27, 1945.
Jonathan Unglaub, ‘A new drawing for the engraving of St. Jerome by Agostino Carracci’, in Master Drawings, vol. 45, 2007.
