Title

Saint Jerome in His Study

After

Van Cleve, Joos (Cleves, ca 1485 - Antwerp, 1540/1541)

Van Reymerswale, Marinus (Reimerswaal, ca 1489 - Goes, ca 1546)

Typology

School

Century

Technique

Support

Observations

This painting belongs to a widely disseminated iconographic type of Saint Jerome in his Study, whose prototype – ultimately based on Albrecht Dürer’s 1521 painting (Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon) –has been variously attributed to Joos van Cleve and Marinus van Reymerswale. The composition, closely related to a panel now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (inv. 387), dated ca. 1530–1540, features a half-length figure of the saint seated at his desk, absorbed in meditation. In this variant, Jerome wears a red mantle and a soft cap; his long beard and introspective gesture – his right hand raised to his temple –emphasize the contemplative nature of the scene. With his left hand he points to a human skull placed prominently on the desk, a traditional memento mori motif underscoring the transience of earthly life.

The desk is furnished with objects recurrent in this pictorial tradition: an extinguished candle, an open book resting on a small lectern, and additional volumes suggesting Jerome’s scholarly authority. A window often appears at the left, providing a source of natural light, while the back wall typically includes a clock, reinforcing the theme of time’s passage. Many versions also bear inscriptions. The fragment preserved here almost certainly derives from the moralizing maxim Omnis homo moriens, nosce te ipsum (“Every man who dies, know thyself”), a phrase consistent with the penitential and introspective tenor of Jerome’s iconography. Although not a direct biblical quotation, the formula belongs to the broad humanist and devotional culture of the sixteenth century, in which nosce te ipsum (“know thyself”) was frequently paired with reminders of mortality.

Locations

• Convent of Santa Paula, Seville (Spain)