Saint Jerome penitent

This is one of the first works Piero della Francesca signed and dated. On a small panel from about 1450 he set Saint Jerome kneeling in the open, a stone in his hand to strike his own chest, a crucifix propped on a branch before him. Jerome was the scholar who had translated the Bible into Latin centuries earlier, and here he does penance as a hermit. What Piero cared about shows less in the saint than in the world around him. The trees, the still water and the town step back into a calm, measured space, lit by an even, sober daylight, the same geometry he brought to his larger frescoes tried out at close range. The panel was likely made for private prayer, and scholars link it to Gerolamo Ferretti of the Italian port city of Ancona, whose name saint was Jerome. On the trunk Piero left a small painted label reading, in Latin, the work of Piero of Borgo, 1450.