Saint Jerome

This Saint Jerome of around 1640, now in the San Diego Museum of Art, depicts the Church Father as a scholar-hermit with his traditional attributes of a skull and crucifix. Jerome was the most frequently depicted saint in Zurbarán's oeuvre after Francis of Assisi. Zurbarán's austere, powerfully meditative style—white-robed monks in intense chiaroscuro, saints presented against dark backgrounds with sculptural solidity—made him the ideal painter for the Counter-Reformation religious orders of Extremadura and Seville.

The aged scholar's bare torso is modeled with powerful naturalism, the weathered skin and visible bones conveying years of ascetic depentance. The contrast between the living flesh and the death's-head creates a memento mori meditation.