St. Jerome in Penitence

When they didn't represent the saint in a scholarly environment, Renaissance depictions of St. Jerome (340/345-420) often showed him as a penitent figure in the wilderness. Such scenes were especially common in northern Italian art, and Dürer imported the motif to Germany following his first visit to Italy in 1494-5. In this scene, Saint Jerome kneels before a crucifix, wielding in his right hand the stone with which he would habitually beat his chest. At the saint’s heels is the lion that, according to legend, followed Jerome after the saint had removed a thorn from his paw. While working in a largely Italian subject matter, Dürer alludes to his native Germany in the landscape background, taken from his studies of rock quarries near Nuremberg.