Saint Jerome

Jusepe de Ribera was Spanish by birth, but he spent his whole working life in Naples, which in his day was ruled from Spain. He painted Saint Jerome many times, and almost always as a penitent. An old scholar stripped to the waist in the wilderness, his skin and bones rendered with an honesty that Naples loved and that softer painters avoided. Jerome had translated the Bible into Latin centuries before, and the Counter-Reformation church prized him as both a thinker and a model of hard repentance, which is why patrons kept asking for him. This canvas dates to around 1651, near the very end of Ribera's life. He died the following year. Look for the skull and the books beside him, the tools of a man caught between study and prayer.