San Girolamo Penitent, Venetian school of the 500th century (circle of Jacopo Negretti, known as Palma il Giovane)

Venetian school of the end of the 500th century
Circle of Jacopo Negretti, known as Palma il Giovane (Venice 1544 – 1628)
Saint Jerome the Penitent

Oil painting on canvas
85 x 64 cm., In frame 97 x 76 cm.

This splendid painting, which offers us an intense depiction of San Girolamo Penitent, doctor of the Church who lived between the 4th and 5th centuries, is a work of notable quality and pictorial refinement, testimony to the mature Venetian Renaissance, painted in the Venetian area around the end of the sixteenth century.
The multifaceted figure of the Saint, hermit, penitent, cardinal and fine humanist, who translated the Bible into Latin, enjoyed great success between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a supreme example of the harmony between classical age knowledge and Christian virtue. For this reason it was a subject dear to a refined and cultured public, often illustrated in small-sized works intended for private devotion.
The elderly Saint is depicted half-naked, according to the typical iconography which sees him in the guise of a hermit, while, kneeling, he hits his chest with a stone as a sign of penance. We see him with his gaze intent on contemplating the crucifix and the open book, both of his canonical iconographic attributes, references to his fruitful activity as a biblical scholar and theologian, which made him the forerunner of the Renaissance humanist.
Saint Jerome is represented in a mountainous and wild landscape, near the Bethlehem cave where he retreated to follow his vocation as a hermit, at the end of which opens the view of a city, emblem of the contrast between nature and civilization.
Examining its stylistic characteristics, the composition is undoubtedly indebted to the models created by Jacopo Negretti known as Palma il Giovane (Venice 1548-1628), who approached the subject several times with multiple illustrative methods.
The brightness that envelops the scene is of clear Venetian ancestry: the composition is crossed by an intense glow that irradiates the figure of the Saint, emphasizing the rather sober chromatic range, played on earthy tones.
The painting, whose excellent condition offers us an optimal reading, denotes a very precise and quality brushwork. The examination under Wood's lamp does not show any significant restorations, but some scattered retouching on the surface.

The work is accompanied by an expertise of photographic authenticity in accordance with the law.
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