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

St Jerome in the Wilderness

c. 1509
Oil on panel, 81 x 61 cm
Museo Nazionale di Castel Sant'Angelo, Rome

In Venetian Renaissance art, St Jerome was portrayed either seated and reading in his study or kneeling in penitence in the wilderness. Lotto painted at least five depictions of St Jerome and, taken in chronological order, these works show a striking development in his treatment of the theme. Whereas the earliest version of the theme, now in the Louvre, had combined the saint's penitential and contemplative functions, the St Jerome in Castel Sant'Angelomarks a radical change in Lotto's approach to the subject. Jerome here appears twice, in the upper left as a penitent kneeling before a crucifix and beating his breast with a stone, and in the foreground as a scholar seated on a path marked off by a rudimentary fence.

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.