1500, Perugino (Pietro Vannucci), St. Jerome in the Wilderness -- Palazzo Barberini (Rome)
From the museum label: This small picture attributed to Perugino revisits an iconographical motif fairly frequent in 15th and 16th century Italian painting, depicting St. Jerome more as an inspired translator of the Bible than as a penitent hermit fleeing the insidious temptations of the world, embodied here in the walled city in the distant background.
At the same time, however, the image, which was clearly intended to offer visual support for ascetic meditation, also points up the exemplary value of imitation, because the ageing Jerome is literally following in the footsteps of an even more illustrious hermit, the precursor John the Baptist. The Baptist is seen here in the left background when, according to a popular if apocryphal legend, he withdrew into the desert while still a boy and there had the privilege of meeting the boy Jesus on his return from the flight into Egypt.
1500, Perugino (Pietro Vannucci), St. Jerome in the Wilderness -- Palazzo Barberini (Rome)
From the museum label: This small picture attributed to Perugino revisits an iconographical motif fairly frequent in 15th and 16th century Italian painting, depicting St. Jerome more as an inspired translator of the Bible than as a penitent hermit fleeing the insidious temptations of the world, embodied here in the walled city in the distant background.
At the same time, however, the image, which was clearly intended to offer visual support for ascetic meditation, also points up the exemplary value of imitation, because the ageing Jerome is literally following in the footsteps of an even more illustrious hermit, the precursor John the Baptist. The Baptist is seen here in the left background when, according to a popular if apocryphal legend, he withdrew into the desert while still a boy and there had the privilege of meeting the boy Jesus on his return from the flight into Egypt.