St. Jerome in the Wilderness

Infobox Painting|

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title=St Jerome in the Wilderness
artist= Leonardo da Vinci
year=c. 1480
type=Tempera and oil on panel
height=103
width=75
city=Rome
museum=Vatican Museums

"St Jerome in the Wilderness" (c. 1480) is an unfinished painting by Leonardo da Vinci, now in the Vatican Museums, Rome.

ubject matter and technique

It depicts Saint Jerome during his retreat to the Syrian desert, where he lived the life of a hermit. At his feet is the lion which became a loyal companion to Jerome after he extracted a thorn from its paw, and which is a traditional attribute of the saint. On the left-hand side of the panel the background is a rocky landscape shrouded in mist using Leonardo's famed "sfumato" technique, whereas the opening in the rocks on the right-hand side has not got past the sketching stage. The only discernible feature is a church on a basilica plan; its presence alludes to Jerome's position in Western Christianity as one of the Doctors of the Church.

Provenance

The panel was cut in two at some point in its history and was reassembled for the early 19th-century collector, Cardinal Fesch, the uncle of Napoleon Bonaparte. Popular legend has it that the Cardinal discovered the part of the panel with the saint’s torso being offered as a table-top in a shop in Rome. Many years later, he found the corresponding piece with the saint’s head being used as a wedge for shoemaker’s bench. [Brockwell, Maurice Walter, " [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN1419129694&id=eRbcNhOdfx4C&pg=PA7&lpg=PA7&printsec=8&dq=%22leonardo+da+vinci%22+jerome&sig=vGqbyDIKnuz4SQu8-OpbsLhzau4 Leonardo da Vinci] ". Kessinger, 2004, p. 7] Whatever the circumstances of Fesch's finding the parts, the repaired panel was sold by his descendants to Pope Pius IX, who installed the it in the Pinacoteca Vaticana, now part of the Vatican Museums. The "St. Jerome" was once believed to have been part of the collection of the painter Angelika Kauffmann, but this theory too has been rejected by recent scholars.Zöllner, Frank, "Leonardo da Vinci: the complete paintings and sculptures". London: Taschen, 2003, p. 221]

References