Saint Jerome in the Wilderness

Leonardo began this around 1480, when he was in his late 20s in Florence and still building his name, and then he did what he did with so many things: he left it unfinished. Saint Jerome kneels in a rocky wilderness, an old hermit gazing toward a small crucifix, his hand holding the stone he beat against his own chest in penance. At his feet a lion stretches out. You can watch Leonardo thinking on the panel itself. The saint's neck and shoulder are worked up in careful anatomical detail, so precise that people have wondered whether he dissected a body to get it, while much of the rest is still just brown underdrawing. After his death the panel had a stranger life than most. It was cut into pieces, and a cardinal, Napoleon's uncle, is said to have found part of it being used as the top of a stool in a Roman shop before the fragments were tracked down and joined back together.