Saint Jerome

In 1600 the printmaker Francesco Villamena engraved this Saint Jerome, so Barocci had finished it by then, most likely in the late 1590s. It is a night scene. A moon almost hidden behind a mountain catches the distant hills, and a lantern hanging in the cave lights the saint. Jerome has just set his book down under his arm and beats his chest with a stone, eyes on the crucifix. The skull and hourglass beside him speak of death, and his red cardinal's hat shows at the right edge. Barocci reused models he had fixed in drawings, and most scholars agree that the old man here is almost certainly the one who sat for Anchises, the father carried out of Troy in his other canvas in this collection. The signature at lower left gives his name and his home town, Urbino, and the picture first appears in a Borghese inventory in 1693.