Saint Jerome in Penitence

El Greco painted this in Toledo around 1597, a generation after the Council of Trent had told Catholics to take confession and penance seriously as a road to salvation. That instruction is the whole subject here. Jerome, the scholar who translated the Bible into Latin, kneels half-naked in a rocky hollow, a stone in his hand to beat his own chest before a small crucifix. The skull and the hourglass beside his books are reminders of how short life is. El Greco gives him a cardinal's red hat, though that rank did not exist in Jerome's day, a shorthand for his service to the Church.