São Jerônimo e um Doador

In the 1450s a Venetian silk merchant named Girolamo Amadi wanted his name attached to a saint. That was a normal thing to buy then. You paid for the picture, gave money to shrines, and hoped the holy figure would put in a word for your soul later on. So here he kneels, small and business-like in his dark robe, beside Saint Jerome, the fourth-century scholar who turned the Bible into Latin, shown with his book and the rocky hillside he retreated to. Piero della Francesca gave that background the soft light of his own Tuscan valley around Sansepolcro rather than any Venetian scene. The panel is small, and its surface has rubbed thin over five centuries, but Amadi is still there at Jerome's side, exactly as he paid to be.