Saint Jerome in the Desert

This Saint Jerome in the Desert, around 1450, now in the Detroit Institute of Arts, depicts the Church Father in his wilderness retreat with the lion whose paw he famously healed. Jerome was one of the most frequently depicted saints in Netherlandish art Rogier van der Weyden combined exquisite emotional intensity with compositional clarity, making him the most influential Flemish painter of the mid-fifteenth century Altarpieces featuring rows of standing saints served both liturgical and devot

The desert setting is rendered with the Netherlandish paradox of lush detail in an ostensibly barren landscape. Jerome's aged flesh and the lion's fur are painted with characteristic precision and textural differentiation.