Sacred and legendary art, volume 1 (of 2) / Containing legends of the angels and archangels, the evangelists, the Apostles, the doctors of the church, and St. Mary magdalene, as represented in the fine arts.

by Mrs. Jameson

85 St. Jerome doing Penance (Titian)

The penitent St. Jerome seems to have been adopted throughout the Christian Church as the approved symbol of Christian penitence, self-denial, and self-abasement. No devotional subject, if we except the ‘Madonna and Child’ and the ‘Magdalene,’ is of such perpetual recurrence. In the treatment it has been infinitely varied. The scene is generally a wild rocky solitude: St. Jerome, half naked, emaciated, with matted hair and beard, is seen on his knees before a crucifix, beating his breast with a stone. The lion is almost always introduced, sometimes asleep, or crouching at his feet; sometimes keeping guard, sometimes drinking at a stream. The most magnificent example of this treatment is by Titian:[260] St. Jerome, kneeling on one knee, half supported by a craggy rock, and holding the stone, looks up with eager devotion to a cross, artlessly fixed into a cleft in the rock; two books lie on a cliff behind; at his feet are a skull and hour-glass; and the lion reposes in front. The feeling of deep solitude, and a kind of sacred horror breathed over this picture, are inconceivably fine and impressive. Another by Titian, but inferior, is in the Louvre; and there are at least twelve engravings of St. Jerome doing penance, after the same painter: among them a superb landscape, in which are seen a lion and a lioness prowling in the wilderness, while the saint is doing penance in the foreground. By Agostino Caracci there is a famous engraving of ‘St. Jerome doing penance in a cave,’ called from its size the great St. Jerome. But to particularise further would be endless: I know scarcely any Italian painter since the fifteenth century who has not treated this subject at least once.

The Spanish painters have rendered it with a gloomy power, and revelled in its mystic significance. In the Spanish gallery of the Louvre I counted at least twenty St. Jeromes: the old German painters and engravers also delighted in it, on account of its picturesque capabilities.

Albert Dürer represents St. Jerome kneeling before a crucifix, which he has suspended against the trunk of a massy tree; an open book is near it; he holds in his right hand a flint-stone, with which he is about to strike his breast, all wounded and bleeding from the blows already inflicted; the lion crouches behind him, and in the distance is a stag.

The penitent St. Jerome is not a good subject for sculpture; the undraped, meagre form, and the abasement of suffering, are disagreeable in this treatment: yet such representations are constantly met with in churches. The famous colossal statue by Torrigiano, now in the Museum at Seville, represents St. Jerome kneeling on a rock, a stone in one hand, a crucifix in the other. At Venice, in the Frari, there is a statue of St. Jerome, standing, with the stone in his hand and the lion at his feet; too majestic for the Penitent. There are several other statues of St. Jerome at Venice, from the Liberi and Lombardi schools, all fine as statues; but the penitent saint is idealised into the patron-saint of penitents.

When figures of St. Jerome as penitent are introduced in Madonna pictures, or in the Passion of Christ, then such figures are devotional, and symbolical, in a general sense, of Christian repentance.

There is an early picture of the Crucifixion, by Raphael,[261] in which he has placed St. Jerome at the foot of the cross, beating his breast with a stone(86).

86 St. Jerome, as Penitent, in a Crucifixion (Raphael)

The pictures from the life of St. Jerome comprise a variety of subjects:—1. ‘He receives the cardinal’s hat from the Virgin:’ sometimes it is the Infant Christ, seated in the lap of the Virgin, who presents it to him. 2. ‘He disputes with the Jewish doctors on the truth of the Christian religion;’ in a curious picture by Juan de Valdes.[262] He stands on one side of a table in an attitude of authority: the rabbis, each of whom has a demon looking over his shoulder, are searching their books for arguments against him. 3. ‘St. Jerome, while studying Hebrew in the solitude of Chalcida, hears in a vision the sound of the last trumpet, calling men to judgment.’ This is a common subject, and styled ‘The Vision of St. Jerome.’ I have met with no example earlier than the fifteenth century. In general he is lying on the ground, and an angel sounds the trumpet from above. In a composition by Ribera he holds a pen in one hand and a penknife in the other: he seems to have been arrested in the very act of mending his pen by the blast of the trumpet: the figure of the saint, wasted even to skin and bone, and his look of petrified amazement, are very fine, notwithstanding the commonplace action. In a picture by Subleyras, in the Louvre, St. Jerome is gazing upwards, with an astonished look; three archangels sound their trumpets from above. In a picture by Antonio Pereda, at Madrid, St. Jerome not only hears in his vision the sound of the last trump, he sees the dead arise from their graves around him. Lastly, by way of climax, I may mention a picture in the Louvre, by a modern French painter, Sigalon: St. Jerome is in a convulsive fit, and the three angels, blowing their trumpets in his ears, are like furies sent to torment and madden the sinner, rather than to rouse the saint.