LOTTO, Lorenzo
(b. ca. 1480, Venezia, d. 1556, Loreto)

St Jerome in the Wilderness (detail)

c. 1509
Oil on panel
Museo Nazionale di Castel Sant'Angelo, Rome

The painting is dated to the period of the artist's activity in Rome. The recumbent figure of Jerome can be compared with Raphael's Diogenes, reclining on the steps in the School of Athens.

The landscape throughout features symbolic motifs - woodcutter, shepherd and his flocks, and donkey beaten by its owner. Even the tree trunks have surreal female forms suggesting the temptations of the flesh against with Jerome struggled.