The painting "St. Jerome" is one of the most expressive works of the great master of the Renaissance. Today it is stored in the Vatican Pinakothek and, despite its incompleteness, attracts more and more attention of fans of Leonardo da Vinci's work.
Saint Jerome in the desert
Jerome is equally revered in both the Orthodox and Catholic traditions as one of the teachers of the church. The plot of the picture is one of two iconographic images of St. Jerome. Usually, in the artistic tradition, he was depicted either as a cardinal in a red mantle, with the attributes of scholarship and high rank, or as a penitent sinner, dressed in simple clothes, in the desert, beating himself with a stone in the chest.
Leonardo da Vinci turned to the second image, depicting a penitent elder half-naked, in old clothes, in the middle of a desert landscape. The saint holds a stone in his hand; he is ready to strike himself. At his feet lies a lion, the raised head of the beast and the mouth opened in the roar are turned towards the old man.
It is no coincidence that the artist placed the king of animals at the feet of the saint. According to legend, the monk Jerome pulled a splinter from the clutches of a lame lion. Since then, the grateful beast has become his faithful companion and assistant and is often depicted on canvases next to the saint.
Florentine period of Leonardo da Vinci. "Saint Jerome": creating a picture
A large work on a religious plot was commissioned by da Vinci by the church leadership of his native Florence in 1480. The young artist then still worked in the workshop of his teacher Andrea Verocchio - a famous master of the early Renaissance.
However, large-scale work on a board more than a meter in height was not destined to become a completed painting. In 1482, due to political intrigue, Leonardo da Vinci left for Milan. "Saint Jerome" remains in Florence, and the master never returns to work on it.
The current state of the painting
Today, the work in the pictorial plan has been preserved as it was left by Leonardo da Vinci. Saint Jerome on the background of rocks, a lion at his feet, a landscape in the background is drawn on a light undershade. The cliffs and desert surrounding them are marked dark. The expressive figure of the saint is carefully designed and prepared for the painting layer, while the rest of the details are only outlined by common contours. Even in this version, the work is striking in the expression and tragedy of the created image.
Fortunately, the “Saint Jerome” by Leonardo was not subjected to the late attempts of artists to complete the masterpiece. Nevertheless, to this day the picture has come in poor condition. Once sawn into two parts, it existed as a lid for a casket, and then tabletops for almost three centuries. And only in the 19th century it was again restored and took its place among other masterpieces in the Vatican's collection.