Saint Jerome Reading in a Landscape

Giovanni Bellini painted this small panel in Venice around 1480, at a moment when Venetian artists were learning to make light and landscape carry as much feeling as the figures. The old man on the rock is Saint Jerome, the scholar who translated the Bible into Latin, shown here as a hermit deep in his book. His lion dozes in the corner — by legend Jerome had won its trust by pulling a thorn from its paw. Cliffs wall him off from the little town glowing in the distance, and the light picks out his head and those far towers while the middle ground falls into shadow. For years some doubted Bellini's own hand in it. Recent technical study has put that doubt to rest.