san girolamo

Bernardo Zenale painted this Saint Jerome around 1505 for the Museo Poldi Pezzoli in Milan. Zenale was one of the leading Milanese painters before Leonardo's arrival transformed the city's artistic culture, and his later work shows the struggle to incorporate Leonardesque innovations into his more traditional Lombard style. The tempera medium required careful preparation on a gessoed panel and a disciplined layering technique that produced precise, durable surfaces suited to the intricate detail expected of devotional painting.

The panel demonstrates Zenale's characteristic angular figure style with firm contour drawing, showing the influence of the older Lombard tradition alongside traces of the sfumato modeling that Leonardo brought to Milan.