The Departure of St Jerome from Antioch

The Departure of St Jerome from Antioch, at the Museum Complex of San Francesco in Montefalco, depicts the scholar saint leaving the city for the desert—an episode connecting Jerome's early life in Antioch to his later years as a hermit and translator of the Bible. The Montefalco cycle includes narrative episodes beyond the strictly Franciscan legend, expanding into the wider calendar of saints venerated by the Franciscan order. Gozzoli's treatment of the departure scene gives him an occasion for the kind of procession with detailed costumes and landscape backdrop that he handled with particular skill.

The composition is structured as a procession moving through or out of a city gate, with Gozzoli using the architectural frame of the gate to create a pictorial threshold between urban and wilderness settings. The detailed treatment of the city's architecture and the surrounding figures' varied costumes shows the influence of both Fra Angelico's orderly narrative compositions and Ghiberti's densely populated reliefs.