Landscape with Saint Jerome

The story in this panel takes about a fifth of it. Under a rock overhang, in a lean-to of planks and thatch, an old man in a grey robe bends over the paw of a lion and pulls out a thorn. It is the episode from the Golden Legend, the medieval collection of saints' lives every viewer of 1516 would have known, and the crucifix and skull on the ground beside him are the hermit's usual equipment. Everything else is landscape. Patinir grew up on the Meuse around Dinant, where the limestone breaks out of the hillsides in exactly these bare grey blades, and he has moved that rock into the deserts of Palestine. A plank walkway, propped on beams driven into the stone, runs round the crag above Jerome's shelter, and a small figure with a staff is walking along it towards the monastery on the ridge.