Saint Jerome

This bearded cardinal once stood at the left side of a small altarpiece that Crivelli painted for a side chapel in the church of San Domenico, in Ascoli Piceno, in the Italian Marche. In a vivid contrast to the contained violence of the combat between Michael and the Devil, Saint Jerome appears lost in contemplation, gazing down at the small brick church he holds in his left hand.Jerome’s face is in shadow but his long white beard, crow’s feet of wrinkles and deeply tanned face suggest the rigour of the outdoor life of this venerable hermit. In his right hand he holds a bound book of the Bible, which he had translated into Latin; golden rays emanating from the church’s door and window stand for the light his works cast on Church doctrine. To show off his skill at foreshortening, Crivelli has shown the book sideways on, so that we see its gilded fore-edges and the clasp which holds it closed, while its sides recede at a sharp angle. The artist’s interest in textiles is evident in the watered silk lining of Jerome’s hood, the creases of his white gloves and the tassels which hang from his hat.The rich red of his cardinal’s robes forms a striking contrast to the glittering damask of the gilded background behind him. The robes fall in weighty folds around his feet and over the edge of the marble parapet on which he stands, linking his space with ours. In a detail typical of Crivelli, Jerome’s toe peeps out from his robes and turns up slightly so we can see the sole of his shoe (compare this to an earlier fifteenth-century work, Saints Jerome and John the Baptist). At his feet, a lion sits on the edge of his robes, gazing up in trusting expectation and raising its paw, which is pierced by a long thorn. According to legend, Jerome pulled a thorn out the paw of a lion which he met in the desert, and which remained his faithful companion till his death. The lion is startlingly accurate, and seems to have been drawn from life. Lions were kept in menageries by princes and cities in medieval Italy, and Crivelli may well have seen and sketched one, perhaps into a model book such as we know were used by other fifteenth-century artists.Jerome could either have had a particular meaning for the commissioner of the San Domenico altarpiece, perhaps as a name-saint, or he might simply have been included as a defender of the Catholic faith against heresy, one of the Dominican Order’s prime concerns. The contrast between the elaborate decoration of the gilded background, and the flat burnished gold and raised pastiglia of the saint’s halo must have acted like a spotlight, drawing attention to Jerome’s face in the candlelight of a medieval church.