The Temptation of Saint Jerome

Savoldo's Temptation of Saint Jerome from around 1521 depicts the Church Father's famous admission in a letter that even in the harshest desert penance his mind was filled with visions of dancing girls and Roman social life. Jerome's temptations were a different register from Anthony's demonic assaults — more psychological, more culturally specific, the temptation of an educated man who cannot escape his cultivated past. Savoldo's treatment combines his characteristic dramatic lighting with a warm rendering of the female figures who appear to the kneeling saint, creating a tension between the saint's ascetic intent and the sensuous quality of what torments him.

Savoldo's dramatic nocturnal lighting casts the scene in deep shadows punctuated by gleaming highlights, creating an atmosphere of psychological tension between the ascetic saint and his phantasmal tempters.