Saint Jerome

Around 1740 an inventory of the Barberini palace at the Quattro Fontane recorded this canvas in the prince's audience room as a Saint Jerome writing by candlelight, by Monsù Gherardo Fiamengo, Mister Gerard the Fleming. That meant Gerrit van Honthorst, the Dutch painter the Romans called Gherardo delle Notti, Gerard of the Nights, who had made candlelit pictures the fashion in the city before he went home in 1620. The guess is easy to understand. The museum reads the picture above all as a study of what a single flame does to different surfaces. The crumpled sheet of paper and the old man's soft white beard catch it full on. The open book stands dark against the light, the skull on the table is barely visible in the shadow, and where his fingers touch the edge of the book the light glows red through them. Who painted it, around 1625 to 1635, is still debated. The museum lists it under Trophime Bigot, while its own catalogue entry treats it as one of the finest works of the so-called Candlelight Master, a painter some scholars identify with Bigot and others keep apart from him. A similar version is in the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, and a Magdalene in the museum of Ponce, in Puerto Rico, may have been its companion.