The Vision of Saint Jerome

Whether I eat or drink or do anything else, the trumpet of the Last Judgment always seems to sound in my ears. Words like these were credited to Saint Jerome for centuries, and painters turned them into a scene. Guercino shows the old scholar in his wilderness retreat, startled as an angel blows a trumpet over him, with a skull and a book in the lower right corner. The picture is small, less than half a metre across, and was painted around 1619 or 1620.

By 1623 it belonged to Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi, nephew of Pope Gregory XV. Later it passed to Everhard Jabach, a banker from Cologne who became one of the great collectors in Paris, and by 1662 to Louis-Henri de Loménie de Brienne, one of Louis XIV's secretaries of state. In 1685 the king bought it for 671 livres, and in 1709 it was hanging in his Petite Galerie at Versailles.