St. Jerome in the Wilderness

Albrecht Dürer's Saint Jerome in the Wilderness, painted around 1496 and now in the National Gallery, London, is an early work by the greatest German Renaissance artist. Dürer had recently returned from his first Italian journey (1494-1495), and this painting reflects the synthesis of German precision with Italian landscape and figure conception that characterized his revolutionary art. The work dates to the period when the young Dürer was establishing himself in Nuremberg.

Dürer combines meticulous Northern detail in the rendering of the saint and rocky landscape with Italian compositional influence, demonstrating the cross-cultural synthesis that would define his artistic achievement.