Penitent Saint Jerome

Jerome translated the Bible into Latin around the year 400 and had served as secretary to a pope in Rome, and on the strength of that later painters dressed him as a cardinal, in red, long before the office looked anything like that. Here the red cloak is all he wears. A cross rests in one hand and a stone is raised to beat his own chest, the penance the hermit saint was famous for. Ribera signed and dated the canvas 1652, the last year of his life, and made it almost square, a shape he seldom used. The picture later belonged to Isabel de Farnesio, the Italian-born queen of Philip V, who kept it at the palace of La Granja in Segovia. Her inventory of 1746 lists it as number 517, hanging in the room where mass used to be said.