Saint Jerome in the Wilderness
Leonardo da Vinci (1452 to 1519) · About 1480 to 1490
An old man kneels in a rocky wilderness, his emaciated body twisted, his right arm drawn back to strike his chest with a stone. He is Saint Jerome, the scholar who translated the Bible into Latin and who, according to legend, retreated to the Syrian desert to punish himself for his worldly learning. At his feet a lion, his companion in the story, stretches out and roars. In the background a rocky opening shows a distant view, and on the right a faint church facade can just be made out.
The panel was never finished, and that is what makes it fascinating. Leonardo laid down the drawing and the dark underpainting, blocked in the rocks and the lion, and modelled the saint's head and shoulders with extraordinary care, then stopped. You can see how he built a picture: light and shade first, colour later. The muscles of the neck and the hollow cheeks show his knowledge of anatomy, while the swirl of the lion's body mirrors the curve of the saint's back. The composition fits within a circle drawn around the figure, a geometry Leonardo used often.
The picture vanished for three centuries. According to a story that may be partly legend, the painter Angelica Kauffman owned it, and after her death Cardinal Joseph Fesch, Napoleon's uncle, found the panel in Rome in two pieces: the body in a junk shop being used as a box lid and the head years later in a cobbler's workshop. The join across the saint's neck is still visible. Pope Pius the Ninth bought it for the Vatican in eighteen fifty six. It is one of only a handful of paintings by Leonardo anywhere, and the only one in Rome, a raw glimpse into how the most inquisitive mind of the Renaissance began a painting.
Did You Know? Legend says the panel was found cut in two, the lower part serving as the lid of a box in a Roman shop and the head turning up later at a shoemaker's.
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