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The subject of the penitent St Jerome enjoyed special favour in fifteenth-century Florentine art. In this composition St Jerome, leaning on his crutch, kneels in the foreground. Behind him is a cave in the hillside that occupies more than half of the painting. He beats his chest with a stone, in front of a thin Crucifix. Hidden in the forest behind the saint, his attribute, the lion, is barely visible. In the distance, there is only a small and apparently deserted town.
The small painting probably served as a devotional image for a bedchamber.
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