Spanish school of the XVII century.

Spanish school of the XVII century.
"St. Jerome in his study".
Oil on canvas.
Presents Repainting.
Measurements: 95 x 74 cm; 102 x 80.5 cm (frame).
In this work the painter offers us a dramatic image full of mystical emotion, very typical of the Spanish Counter-Reformation art. Thus, we see a work of clear and concise composition, with the half-length saint in the foreground, highlighted by direct lighting, tenebrist, on a neutral and dark background. As is also common at this time in the Spanish school, St. Jerome appears during his period of penance in the desert, very thin and physically exhausted, writing and meditating. There are no other iconographic attributes that complicate the reading or detract from the naturalism of the image, and in fact realism is basic in the composition, both in terms of lighting and in the representation of objects and, especially, of the saint's anatomy. Far from any idealization, it is an old body with a suffering face, endowed with great expressiveness, which directs a lost, absent gaze towards the distance, while he writes his writings. Next to the table rests the skull, symbol of the tempus fugit, and the lion that accompanied him since he took the thorn out of the silver ... .
One of the four great Doctors of the Latin Church, St. Jerome was born near Aquileia (Italy) in 347. Trained in Rome, he was an accomplished rhetorician and polyglot. Baptized at the age of nineteen, between 375 and 378 he retired to the Syrian desert to lead an anchorite's life. He returned to Rome in 382 and became a collaborator of Pope Damasus. One of the most frequent representations of this saint is his penance in the desert. His attributes are the stone he uses to beat his chest and the skull on which he meditates. Also the cardinal's cape (or a red mantle), although he was never a cardinal, and the tamed lion. The latter comes from a story of the "Golden Legend", where it is narrated that one day, when he was explaining the Bible to the monks of his convent, he saw a lion coming with a limp. He removed the thorn from its paw, and from then on he kept it in his service, instructing it to look after his donkey while it grazed. Some merchants stole the donkey, and the lion recovered it, returning it to the saint without hurting the animal.