St Jerome Penitent.

Lucas van Leyden's Saint Jerome Penitent presents the scholar-saint in his desert wilderness, beating his breast with a stone before a crucifix in the penitential posture that distinguished the Desert Father's practice from his more studious Jerome-in-the-study iconography. Van Leyden's treatment of the penitential desert combines his characteristic landscape background with careful anatomical observation of the saint's aging body, the sagging flesh and prominent bones conveying the physical cost of ascetic self-denial. This combination of devotional subject with nude figure study reflects the northern humanist interest in both spiritual and physical reality.

The painting demonstrates the technical conventions and artistic vocabulary of the period, with attention to composition, color, and the rendering of form appropriate to the subject.