Saint Jerome

In 1546 the Council of Trent, the Catholic Church's answer to the Reformation, declared that the Latin Bible translated by Saint Jerome, the Vulgate, was the authentic text of the Church. For more than a century afterwards Catholic painters kept coming back to Jerome, the fourth-century scholar who had also spent years as a hermit in the Syrian desert.

Guido Reni painted this version late in his life, around 1640. The saint sits among rocks and trees with his head resting on his left arm and a skull in his right hand, a reminder of death and of penance. On the rock beside him lie his books and an inkwell, the tools of the translator. The composition was much admired, and Italian and other European artists copied it again and again, on canvas, on copper and in engravings.

For some years the canvas was lent to the Venaria Reale, the Savoy hunting palace outside Turin. It now hangs in Sala 33 of the Galleria Sabauda.