The study is really a part of a monastery
assigned to St. Jerome himself, his books, manuscripts, and other such
possessions. He has a pot of flowers and a dwarf tree, and a towel
to dry his hands on, and a beautiful chair at his desk. He has taken
off his dusty shoes and left them at the foot of the steps.
The painter of this picture, must have had in his mind a very happy
idea of St. Jerome. Others have sometimes painted him as they thought
he looked when living in a horrible desert, as he did for four years.
But at the time this picture was painted, about the year 1470, St.
Jerome in his study was a more usual subject for painters than St.
Jerome in the desert. One reason of this was that in Italy, in the
latter half of the fifteenth century, St. Jerome was considered the
patron saint of scholars, and for the first time since the fall of
the Roman Empire, scholars were perhaps the most influential people
of the day.
[Illustration: ST. JEROME IN HIS STUDY
From the picture by Antonello da Messina, in the National Gallery,
London]
Of course you all know something about the remarkable revival of
learning in the fifteenth century, which started in Italy, spread
northward, and reached England in the reign of Henry VIII.
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