Saint Jeronimo

Pieter Coecke van Aelst's Saint Jerome brings his characteristic Renaissance compositional clarity to one of the most popular saints in the devotional repertoire. Coecke, who was also a Vitruvian architect and tapestry designer, deployed his architectural skills in creating convincing spatial settings for his devotional figures. Jerome's wilderness retreat, typically shown as a rocky cave with the saint's books and penitential attributes, provided an opportunity to combine figure painting with architectural invention. Coecke's version gives the scholarly saint a dignity appropriate to his status as one of the four Latin Doctors of the Church.

The devotional composition is rendered with attention to the expressive and contemplative qualities that served the painting's function as an aid to prayer and meditation.