San Girolamo

Raffaello Botticini's San Girolamo, painted around 1500 and now in St. Andreas Picture Gallery, depicts Saint Jerome as the penitent hermit in the desert — one of the most frequently painted subjects of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Jerome, the great Latin Doctor of the Church who translated the Bible into the Vulgate, was celebrated both as a scholar and as an ascetic who retreated to the Syrian desert to mortify his flesh. Botticini, a Florentine painter from the workshop tradition of his more famous father Francesco Botticini, produced devotional images in the manner of late Quattrocento Florentine workshop practice, absorbing influence from Ghirlandaio and Filippino Lippi. The San Girolamo would have served as an object of personal devotion for a humanist or clerical patron.

Jerome is shown in the rocky wilderness, typically beating his breast with a stone before a crucifix, with his cardinal's hat and lion nearby. Florentine workshop conventions show in the careful figure modeling and the landscape background rendered with atmospheric perspective.