Nativity with Saint Jerome

Saint Jerome has no place in the Gospel account of Christ's birth, yet here he is beside the manger, and there is a reason. In 386 the scholar settled in Bethlehem, founded a monastery and spent the rest of his life there, more than 30 years, translating the Bible into Latin beside the cave where Christ was believed to have been born. Tradition placed his tomb close to that cave.

Liberale painted this panel around 1495 for the convent of San Fermo in Verona. The museum counts it among his later works, given to pious subjects, and finds its charm in a simplified landscape where the animals are described so naively that they seem to have wandered out of the fables and popular lore of the Gothic age. The museum also owns a second, smaller version of the subject by Liberale, in an upright format.