Saint Jerome in the Desert

Joachim Patinir painted this Saint Jerome in the Desert around 1517 for the Louvre. Patinir's treatments of the penitent Jerome are among his masterpieces, setting the tiny saint within vast, fantastical landscapes of extraordinary visual poetry. Saint panels were fundamental units of Renaissance altarpiece production, produced individually or as wings of polyptychs, and served the devotional needs of the commissioning church, guild, or confraternity whose patron saint they depicted.

The painting exemplifies Patinir's mature panoramic style with sweeping geological formations and atmospheric perspective, the saint reduced to a staffage element within a landscape of cosmic scope.