Tiziano (c.1488-1576)
San Girolamo penitente (Penitent Saint Jerome)
1556–1561
Oil on canvas, 235 x 125 cm
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milano
The painting was made for the altar of Santa Maria Nuova, in Venice, around the mid-1550s; it arrived in Brera in 1808. The 1982 restoration confirmed that the rib – the curved top of the panel – was added in the eighteenth century: the work therefore originally had the same rectangular shape as the other two autograph versions of the subject, preserved at the Escorial and in the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection.
In this masterpiece painted in an extremely free manner, nature seems to participate in the torment of the saint in penitence. In addition to the books and the lion, peacefully sleeping, other elements have been read in relation to Saint Jerome. the lizard alludes to temptations; the snail, capable of resisting for a long time without food in its shell, is like the ascetic inside the cave; the ivy refers to the tree of the cross, while the skull and the hourglass recall the passage of time and death. (Brera)
Compare:
Tiziano (c.1488-1576)
San Girolamo penitente
c.1575
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid