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Landscape with the Penitent Saint Jerome
1530–40
- Medium
- Oil on panel
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 38.1 × 54.5 cm (15 × 21 7/16 in.); Framed: 60.7 × 77.2 × 6.4 cm (23 7/8 × 30 3/8 × 2 1/2 in.)
- Culture
- Belgium
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Credit line
- Robert A. Waller Memorial Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
In the midst of this expansive landscape, a tiny figure of the hermit Saint Jerome beats his breast with a rock in penance for his earlier worldly pursuits as he gazes at a sculpture of Jesus on the cross. In spite of this fervent activity in the foreground, the true subject of this painting is the vast landscape behind the saint. The artist rendered the mountains, valleys, rivers, and villages in successive bands of brown, green, and blue, the typical structure of the independent landscape that first emerged as a genre in this period. The roads that wind through the scene—metaphors for the journey of life—were a popular motif in Flemish painting and likely helped this work appeal to the growing number of art collectors in the booming city of Antwerp, a center of international trade.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
