Der heilige Hieronymus hört die Posaune des Jüngsten Gerichts

David painted this Saint Jerome in Rome in 1779, four years into the stay at the French Academy there that he had won as a prize student. Rome was where he was meant to soak up antiquity and the old masters, and this canvas still speaks their older language, warm and Baroque, the aged saint half-naked in his cave with a skull, a crucifix, and his pen. Jerome is shown mid-work on the Latin Bible, the Vulgate, that he translated in the 4th century, startled by the trumpet that will announce the Last Judgment. Within a few years David would strip all this warmth away and invent the cold, sculptural style that carried the Revolution. He sent the picture to the Paris Salon of 1781. It now hangs in Quebec, one of only two paintings by David anywhere in Canada.