St Jerome Dreams He is Whipped on Christ's Order

This scene of Saint Jerome dreaming he is whipped on Christ's order depicts one of the most psychologically dramatic episodes in Jerome's autobiography: the scholar, addicted to Cicero and Virgil, was dragged before a divine tribunal where Christ condemned him for being 'Ciceronian, not Christian'—and ordered him flogged. The vision so terrified Jerome that he abandoned classical literature, though his subsequent writings show his immersion in it never truly ceased. Sano di Pietro captures the scholar's vulnerability—the powerful intellectual at the mercy of divine discipline—with characteristic Sienese grace. The dream vision made Jerome the patron saint of those torn between secular learning and religious devotion.

The dream vision is rendered with Sano di Pietro's characteristic narrative clarity, the supernatural punishment depicted within the refined Sienese style that treated even violent subjects with decorative elegance.