Albrecht Dürer 1471–1528
NG 6563 
Saint Jerome

Susan Foister, 2024

Extracted from:
Susan Foister; with Rachel Billinge, Marika Spring and Lea Viehweger; and contributions by Lorne Campbell and Allison Goudie, The German Paintings before 1800 (London: National Gallery Global and Yale University Press, 2024).

Oil on wood (pear, identified), 23.1 × 17.4 cm, painted surface (obverse and reverse) approximately 22 × 16.2 cm

Provenance

There is an unidentified seal on the reverse, top left, showing an inverted chevron with three rounded shapes (fig. 1).

NG 6563 is conceivably to be identified with the work, possibly but not certainly a painting, owned by George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham (1592–1628) and recorded in the inventory taken in 1635 of the pictures and other works of art at York House, London under the name ‘Albert Duerse’: firstly ‘Two little heads Cutt in wood’, followed by, and less certainly to be attributed to Dürer, ‘A little piece with a lyon’.¹ Buckingham’s pictures were widely dispersed: some were bought by Diego Duarte (died 1690), a jeweller and picture dealer in Antwerp, and his inventory of 1683 mentions as no. 169 ‘A little piece of a St Jerome with a lion’, as well as a Magdalen, with the name of Scorel appended; it is uncertain whether Scorel (that is, Jan van Scorel, 1495–1652) is intended to apply to both pictures listed as no. 169 and if this is two pictures or one.² There are further early references to paintings of Saint Jerome by Dürer, but none can be identified with NG 6563.³

The first certain reference to NG 6563 occurs in the records of the collections of John Staniforth Beckett (1794–1868) of Barnsley (later Torquay) as ‘St Jerome Gio Fr Caroto 13th October 1849 of Farrer £30’, when it was bought from the prominent dealer Henry Farrer and identified as the work of the Italian painter Giovanni Francesco Caroto (about 1480–about 1555).⁴ John Staniforth Beckett was the son of Joseph Beckett of Barnsley who married Mary Staniforth in 1785, and the nephew of Sir John Beckett of Leeds, 1st Baronet (1743–1826).⁵ The painting passed to the family of his niece Elizabeth Beckett (about 1826–1885), daughter of Sir Thomas Beckett, 3rd Baronet (1779–1847) and his wife Caroline, sister of John Staniforth Beckett.⁶ Elizabeth Beckett married Sir Henry [page 250] Hickman Bacon, 10th and 11th Baronet (1820–1872) of Raveningham Hall, Norfolk in 1853 and the painting remained with the Bacon family until 1996 when it was purchased from the Bacon Family Trust with the assistance of the Heritage Lottery Fund, the National Art‐Collections Fund and Sir Paul Getty Jr through the American Friends of the National Gallery.

Copies and Versions

• (1) After Albrecht Dürer, limewood, painted surface 62.2 × 45.4 cm, Cologne, Wallraf‐Richartz Museum (fig. 2).⁷

• (2) German, about 1600?, wood, 22 × 18 cm, formerly Wilhelm Löwenfeld collection, Munich (fig. 3).⁸

• (3) Attributed to Hans Daucher, limestone, 43.5 × 31 cm, Munich, Bayerisches Nationalmuseum (fig. 4).⁹

Related Work

Study of a lion, 1494, parchment, Hamburg, Kunsthalle (fig. 5).

Exhibitions and Loans

On loan to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 1957 ; on long‐term loan to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 1958–96 ; Manchester 1961 (108); King’s Lynn 1966 (10); Nuremberg 1971 (569); Edinburgh, Cardiff, London and Manchester 1996–7 (1); BM 2002 (47); Vienna 2003 (46); Norwich and Sheffield 2006–7; Frankfurt 2013–14 (2.26); NG 2014b; Milan 2018 (3/1); Vienna 2019–20 (19); Aachen 2021 (1); NG 2021–2 (84).

Technical Notes

The painting is in very good condition with no significant loss or damage. There are a few small losses in the sky above the saint’s head, but otherwise the paint surface is well preserved. Overall, and most visible where the paint is thinner such as shadows in the flesh and parts of the sky, there are numerous tiny damages caused by the eruption of lead soap agglomerates from the priming layer. Where the paint is thicker, especially in the blue robe (fig. 6), Jerome’s face, and the clouds along the horizon, the paint has developed drying cracks. There have also been some pigment changes: the darks of the saint’s blue robe have lost definition as a result of the deterioration of the ultramarine‐containing paint (fig. 7); red lake has faded so that the red hat, cloak and book are less strongly coloured than they would have been (figs 8, 10); and the green glazes in the landscape have in places become brown. The reverse is in good condition, but the wood shows through in places where the paint is worn or was thinly applied and has become more transparent on ageing (figs 11, 12, 13).

The support is a single board of wood, identified as pearwood (Pyrus communis), with vertical grain. It is only 3 mm thick and is in very good condition. ¹⁰

The front surface of the panel has a white ground identified as chalk in glue.¹¹ The back of the panel does not have a ground; the paint lies directly on the wood. The ground has a thin layer of light pink paint, apparently lead white and red lead, as a priming. The unpainted wood at the edges would have been covered by the original frame; the function of the incised lines around all four sides is not clear, given that they lie beyond the edge of the preparation and painted surface. The preparation was continuous onto the frame and so has a raised lip (or barb) where it has been broken. Along this lip in places at the bottom, top and left edges are traces of red paint which almost certainly came from the decoration on the original frame, now lost (fig. 9). Some of the original [page 251] [page 252] paint of the vegetation extends slightly beyond the edge of the ground, lower right, suggesting the frame had moved or been removed when that passage was painted.

It is difficult to detect any underdrawing with the aid of infrared reflectography (figs 14, 15); any that might be present must be in a material not visible by infrared techniques. However, some small changes during painting can be seen, such as the extension of the blue robe from the bottom of the elbow and downwards where it runs over the paint of the back of the lion.

Because of the excellent condition of the painting no samples could be taken for analysis so the following [page 253] observations come from surface examination using a microscope. On the front of the painting the only blue pigment seen appeared to be natural ultramarine, mixed with white for the sky and for Jerome’s robe. Some of the deeper shadows in the robe have been underpainted with red lake (fig. 16). The book, hat and cloak all appear to have been painted with an orange‐red opaque underpaint over which is translucent paint containing red lake (extracted from textile shearings), mixed in places with white. The yellow seems to be lead‐tin yellow (as evidenced by the presence of lead soaps). The only green pigment seen appeared to be verdigris, often mixed with white and yellow to make opaque highlights, but used more as a glaze for darks. Black, lead white and probably earth pigments have also been used. The [page 254] [page 255] [page 256] reverse has blue paint, which appears to contain azurite, as well as pink, yellow and white spots made using the same pigments as on the front (fig. 11).

The medium of a sample of green foliage paint from the lower left edge was identified by GC–MS analysis as non‐heat‐bodied linseed oil. A similar binder was also identified in a paint sample from the reverse.¹² A sample of orange‐red paint from the bottom edge, possibly from the original frame, was analysed by GC and also identified as non‐heat‐bodied linseed oil.¹³

Many passages of painting on the obverse were executed rapidly, wet‐in‐wet. On the reverse a spattering technique was used to create the effect of dazzling light in the heavens (fig. 17).

Subject: Obverse

The elderly penitent Saint Jerome kneels in prayer before a crucifix projecting from a tree stump. The crucifix is a T‐shaped cross, seen from the back; it is evidently made from small tree branches as the arms of the cross are cylindrical in form and appear to be covered in bark. The figure of Christ is shown at an acute angle, the head invisible, but the bent knees and white loincloth are evident, the attention to the colouring of the latter perhaps suggesting a vision of Christ’s real presence rather than merely a sculpted figure (fig. 18). The saint has long whitish hair and a white beard; the top of his head is bald, a reflection of age or a monastic tonsure (see below). His eyes are brown; the proper right eye has two white catchlights on the pupil and another on the iris, while there are two white dots on the iris of the proper left eye (fig. 19). He wears a blue robe, open at the front, and holds a stone in his left hand with which to beat his breast in penitence. In his right hand he holds open a thick red‐bound book: the red leather strap ending in a fastening chain or braid hangs loose, and the gold metal peg or hasp to which it would be attached is visible near the centre of the cover nearest the viewer; red page markers can be seen at the edges of the pages (fig. 8). The book may allude to the Vulgate, the Bible text which Jerome translated into Latin.

His red cardinal’s hat and robe lie on the earth to the [page 257] left, in the foreground. The historical Saint Jerome (about 345–420) was one of the so‐called four fathers or doctors of the church but was never created a cardinal, although he is usually represented as such; according to the Golden Legend he was ordained as a ‘cardinal priest’ at the age of thirty‐nine.¹⁴

After Jerome had decided to devote himself to Christian scholarship, but before founding a monastery, he retreated for four years to the Syrian desert as a hermit in order to subdue the flesh. Again according to the Golden Legend he ‘did not stop beating his breast until the Lord restored his peace of mind’.¹⁵ In a letter to his follower Saint Eustochium, Jerome described these penitential episodes in detail: I used to lie down at Jesus’ feet, watered them with my tears, and wiped them with my hair. I remember crying out for days and nights together; and I beat my breast without stopping until the Lord vouchsafed me some tranquillity. Filled with stiff anger against myself, I went into the desert alone. Wherever I found a deep valley or rough mountainside or rocky precipice, I made it my place of prayer and of torture for my unhappy flesh.¹⁶ Saint Jerome said of his time in the desert: ‘of my food and drink I say nothing: even those that are sick there drink only cold water’; the stream suggests his abstinence and perhaps also the cleansing power of heavenly grace for the sinner.¹⁷ The tree stump on which the crucifix rests might have been understood as a reference to the preaching of Saint John the Baptist in the wilderness, calling on sinners to repent.¹⁸

On the right of Jerome is a recumbent lion, commonly represented as the saint’s attribute. Part of his tail is visible to the left of the saint. According to legend (an episode appropriated from the life of Saint Gerasimus), the lion had approached Jerome, suffering from a thorn in its paw, and the saint removed it. The lion became Jerome’s faithful companion, accompanying him to the monastery in Bethlehem where the saint lived and studied from AD 386. It is presumably the church of that monastery with its anachronistic Gothic steeple and bell tower which is shown on the far left of Dürer’s picture (fig. 20). The flash of white on top of the bell tower and on the gable to the right, as well as on the lower part of the steeple, may be intended to represent snow or it may merely indicate the reflection of light.

In the lower right‐hand corner are two birds beside a tumbling stream (fig. 21), and just above them to the right a winged insect, a butterfly or dragonfly, perhaps symbolic of the resurrection (fig. 23); a similar insect is to be seen in Dürer’s engraving of the Virgin with the Dragonfly of about 1494–5 (fig. 24).¹⁹ The red face, white breast and flash of yellow on the wing of the bird with green plumage shown to the right indicates that it is a goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis), often a symbol of the Passion of Christ, its red cheek suggesting a splash of blood (fig. 22). The other bird in the foreground to the left, with grey plumage and a red breast, is a bullfinch (Pyrrhula pyrrhula), its red breast also a symbolic reference to Christ’s Passion (figs 25, 26). The presence of both birds reinforces the object of Jerome’s devotion. The flowers and plants are all identifiable species: they include Rumex crispus L. (curly dock); Hordeum sp. (barley); Trifolium repens L. (white clover); Taraxacum sp. (dandelion) and Plantago major L. (great plantain), both associated with the Passion; Crepis biennis L. (rough hawk’s‐beard); and Capsella bursa‐pastoris (L.) medicus (shepherd’s purse), a healing plant.²⁰ On the far right is a projecting cliff with green deciduous trees and firs on the top (fig. 27). The [page 260] sky is tinged with pink and yellow, denoting either sunrise or sunset (fig. 28).²¹ In the far distance to the left is a range of snow‐covered mountains.

Subject: Reverse

Swirling grey clouds indicate that the scene is located in the heavens. The background is dark. A cosmic event with a heavenly body in motion appears to be represented. Brilliant red streaks radiate from or around a yellow oval placed to the centre‐right of the panel, suggesting a forceful trajectory from the left, which may have resulted in an explosion. The scene is rapidly painted using a wet‐in‐wet technique, the paint applied with broad brushstrokes for the heavenly phenomena, and swiftly applied spattering with a loaded brush to create the background.

The representation of a heavenly body would accord with the tradition that Saint Jerome was a harbinger of Judgement Day.²² This recounts that while he was in the desert Saint Jerome heard the sound of trumpets, announcing the Last Judgement. Medieval texts attributed to Jerome the discovery of the ‘Fifteen Signs’ of the fifteen days before Judgement Day, closely allied to the account in the New Testament of the Revelation of Saint John (themselves the subject of the vivid series of woodcuts published by Dürer in 1498; see also p. 271, fig. 56). According to this tradition the twelfth day saw the stars and constellations fall from heaven.²³ Examples of both painted and sculpted images of Saint Jerome from northern Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries include allusions to the Last Judgement. A French manuscript of about 1480 represents Jerome as cardinal with an image of the Last Judgement behind him.²⁴ In a painting of about 1500 in Wrocław attributed to the Circle of Aelbrecht Bouts (born 1451–5, died 1549) Jerome is shown in penitence in a landscape setting with two donors, the Last Judgement shown above them (fig. 29).²⁵ Similarly, in a number of paintings by or after the sixteenth‐century Netherlandish painter Marinus van Reymerswale (active 1533–1545), Jerome is shown as a cardinal in his study with a book open at an illuminated page showing the Last Judgement, or with the image of the Last Judgement enacted in the sky and seen through a window.²⁶ In a further example of this theme, a German limewood sculpted figure of about 1500, Saint Jerome is represented as a cardinal, with his lion tucked under his arm; he holds a book with both Latin and German texts reading: ‘Always I seem to hear in my ears the voice of the terrible trumpet. Arise, come to the Judgement’ (fig. 31).²⁷ A German woodcut of about 1490 of Jerome in penitence, inscribed ‘Sancte Jeronime ora pro nobis’ [page 261] (‘Saint Jerome, pray for us’), also includes the same Latin text on a scroll which issues from Jerome’s head (fig. 30).²⁸

If the reverse of NG 6553 shows Dürer responding to the tradition which links Saint Jerome to the signs of impending judgement, his painting can be identified as an imaginary visualisation of one of the phenomena betokening the end of the world rather than a record of any specific, observed celestial phenomena which might have been recorded in northern Europe at the end of the Middle Ages. It could, however, have been inspired by the experience of such phenomena or, more probably, by conventions of their representation. It has been variously suggested that the heavenly body shown in the National Gallery painting is intended as a comet, a meteor, a bolide (a type of meteor), a planet, an explosion, a star or an eclipse (or combinations of these).²⁹ Dürer himself observed a comet in 1503 (‘Also I saw a comet in the heavens’) on the occasion of another phenomenon which he recorded, a shower of crosses which descended on the local people.³⁰ Although no comet is known to have been visible in Germany in the last quarter of the fifteenth century, such heavenly displays were illustrated in this period, for example in the Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493 published by Anton Koberger (1445–1513), Dürer’s godfather.³¹ In the background of Dürer’s 1514 engraving Melancolia I a heavenly body which may well be a comet is shown passing across the sky: it has a strongly burning radiance as well as a discernible tail (fig. 32).³² As the reverse of NG 6563 depicts a bright yellow body rather than a white radiance, and only the suggestion of a tail, Dürer’s representation is not easily identifiable as a comet.³³

It has been proposed that the reverse of NG 6563 represents the fall of a specific meteor, one recorded at Ensisheim in Alsace in 1492,³⁴ and illustrated in pamphlets and manuscripts of the period, including one issued in that year; there is a similar woodcut illustration in the Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493.³⁵ There are two reasons for scepticism regarding any relationship between the Ensisheim meteor and Dürer’s painting: firstly, accounts of its fall to earth emphasise the fact that it arrived in daylight, whereas Dürer’s heavenly body is shown shining out of darkness; secondly, the meteor had a distinctive triangular shape, unlike Durer’s more rounded body. It is more probable that the representation of Dürer’s heavenly body was not derived from any such specific source but from his own powerful imagination, perhaps taking inspiration from an event he had heard or read about (he was in Basel, not far from Ensisheim, in 1492); a dream of a deluge he experienced on 4 June 1525 and recorded in a watercolour (Vienna, Albertina) is a similarly vivid and unconventional visualisation.³⁶

Christof Metzger has suggested an alternative to the customary association between Saint Jerome and the celestial imagery of NG 6563, positing that it may represent the Holy Spirit in the form of a thunderbolt striking the saint’s heart.³⁷ According to this proposal, the position of the yellow shape on the reverse deliberately relates to the area on the obverse where the saint’s heart would be: an overlay of the [page 262] [page 263] two sides shows that it is situated slightly to the right of the heart (fig. 33). While such imagery is found in the Epistles of Saint Jerome,³⁸ there appears to be no visual tradition comparable to that of Saint Jerome as harbinger of the Last Judgement. That absence might in itself be an argument for this interpretation of the reverse, as indicative of Dürer’s exceptionally fertile visual imagination. Other such reverses associated with the earliest decade of Dürer’s artistic activity are painted with unusual, similarly celestial subjects and in experimental ways. The portrait of Dürer’s father in the Uffizi (dated 1490) and the Nuremberg portrait of his mother both have reverses depicting hellish scenes with swirling clouds (figs 34, 35), perhaps an invitation to pray for the souls of those depicted on the obverses.³⁹ A comparable example of a painted reverse for a small devotional image is Dürer’s Christ as the Man of Sorrows at Karlsruhe, which represents the brilliant coloured stripes of a cut and polished agate, or, alternatively, the dazzling light of the Resurrection (figs 36, 37).⁴⁰ A painting of the Virgin and Child (Washington, National Gallery) has a more conventional but still freely painted reverse, a scene of the fleeing Lot and his Daughters with explosions of fire in the distance (figs 38, 39).⁴¹

The Iconography of Saint Jerome

Jerome was a highly popular saint in Dürer’s lifetime. Renowned as the author of the Vulgate, the Latin translation of the Bible, and of his collected Epistles, he was frequently represented as a scholar in his study as well as a penitent in the desert.⁴² Dürer represented the former subject in what is usually presumed to be his earliest woodcut, the title‐page to the first part of an edition of the Epistles published in Basel in 1492 (see biography, p. 248), as well as in his masterly engraving of 1514. He also made three representations of the saint in the desert in prints: an engraving usually dated to around 1496 (discussed below, fig. 42), as well as a drypoint and woodcut, both dated 1512.

Paintings representing the penitent Jerome by northern European artists survive from the latter part of the fifteenth century onwards. Dürer’s representation of the saint in the wilderness in NG 6563 follows a type seen in German and Netherlandish paintings of the late fifteenth century: both Dirk Bouts and Hans Memling, for example, produced images of the penitent saint in the wilderness, kneeling before a crucifix.⁴³ However, NG 6563 is not, as sometimes presumed, the first German painting of the penitent Saint Jerome. For example, a painting attributed to the Master of the Coburg Roundels (also known as the Master of the Drapery Studies) of about 1480–90 (fig. 40) shows Saint Jerome in penitence before a crucifix between Saint John the Evangelist and Saint Margaret with a kneeling male donor (a cleric) and a kneeling nun, both evidently Dominicans; the Dominican order had a particular reverence for Jerome.⁴⁴ The [page 264] saint has brown hair and is tonsured and beardless (possibly to emphasise his connection to the order); he is dressed in a white long‐sleeved robe open at the front and clasps a rock to his breast with his right hand.

Closer to the composition of Dürer’s painting is a woodcut in the Passional, an edition of the Golden Legend published by Dürer’s godfather Anton Koberger in Nuremberg in 1488 (fig. 41).⁴⁵ The woodcut shows a penitent Jerome dressed in a long robe which exposes his battered chest, kneeling against a background with cliffs and trees to left and right arranged in a manner similar to that of in NG 6563. The composition differs from Dürer’s – and most contemporary representations – in placing the crucifix and Jerome’s hat and book on the right. However, when reversed, the image is very close to Dürer’s; conceivably, following such a reversed image made in preparation for a woodcut might explain the fact that Dürer’s Jerome holds the rock in his left rather than his right hand.

A distinctive feature of Dürer’s representation is the way in which the saint’s long unkempt white hair and beard suggest the privations and torments of his penitential retreat, giving him the appearance of an elderly man. As Jerome was already aged 39 when he retreated to the desert, this characterisation might be seen as accurately reflecting these well‐known details of his biography. By the early sixteenth century the image of the elderly Jerome as shown in Durer’s own early engraving of the subject (fig. 42) had become widespread in northern Europe, replacing that of the saint as a younger, tonsured figure with brown hair seen in the German and Netherlandish works referred to above.⁴⁶ It has been assumed that Dürer must have relied directly on Italian precedents for his characterisation: the saint was commonly represented there as an elderly man.⁴⁷ However, this is unclear, and whether this can be said to be Dürer’s innovation must remain in question.

The Function of the Painting

The primary function of NG 6563 must have been to act as inspiration for private devotion, as the inscription on the woodcut referred to above (fig. 30) indicates: ‘Saint Jerome, pray for us’. Some Italian images of the penitent saint are closely associable with the monastic foundations of the Hieronymite order originating in Spain, and with lay confraternities in Florence and Fiesole in the fifteenth century.⁴⁸ In Germany there were no Hieronymite monasteries or confraternities, but Jerome was particularly revered by the Dominicans (see fig. 40, discussed above). Patinir’s Penitence of Saint Jerome triptych of about 1512–15 (New York, Metropolitan Museum) with Saint Sebald (patron saint of Nuremberg) and the popular German image of the Trinity of Saint Anne on the reverses of the shutters was perhaps made for a Nuremberg Dominican monastery.⁴⁹ It may be worth noting that in Nuremberg the prioress of the Dominican convent of St Katherine was Felicitas Tucher, a member of the well‐born Tucher family who were patrons of Dürer.⁵⁰ Schilling has suggested that NG 6563 was made for a person of high status, such as Dürer’s patron in later life Cardinal Matthäus Lang von Wellenburg, Archbishop of Salzburg (1468–1540).⁵¹

Dülberg has proposed that NG 6563 functioned as a cover for a portrait of a scholar, rather than as an independent image.⁵² Such covers would not normally have a frame, but evidence that NG 6563 had its own frame, painted red (see Technical Notes), does not necessarily exclude this possibility. The complexity and high finish of the image, however, as well as its good condition, makes it more likely that the painting was an independent devotional work rather than a cover for another.⁵³

Attribution

NG 6563 was acquired in 1849 by John Staniforth Beckett as a work by the sixteenth‐century Veronese artist Giovanni Francesco Caroto (see Provenance). It was first published as a painting by Dürer by David Carritt in 1957 and separately by Edmund Schilling in the same year, the latter dating it to 1498–1500.⁵⁴ Koetser attributed it to Altdorfer.⁵⁵ It was exhibited in the Dürer exhibition at Nuremberg in 1971, where Rowlands records that it was generally accepted, although Levey mentions some doubts in his review, and Lanckoronska attributed it to Baldung.⁵⁶ Since then, although the attribution has been challenged by Luber, the painting has been accepted as the work of Dürer in the catalogues compiled by Anzelewsky, Strieder and, most recently, Wolf, and in the recent exhibitions in Frankfurt and Vienna.⁵⁷

Technical study of the painting provides some insights which inform discussion of the attribution. Pearwood, the support used for NG 6563, is unusual in Dürer’s oeuvre in this respect: he used limewood or occasionally fir, types of wood available in the region around Nuremberg, for most of his works on panel; the exceptions are associated with his visits to Italy and the Low Countries.⁵⁸ Close‐grained pearwood was typically used to carve blocks for creating woodcuts, including those that survive for Dürer’s Hercules in the British Museum and Samson in the Metropolitan Museum, New York (both usually dated to 1497–8).⁵⁹ The woodblocks for Dürer’s slightly later small Passion series of about 1509–11 are also of pearwood (British Museum).⁶⁰ Pearwood would therefore have been easily available to Dürer as a support for a small painting.

The materials of the painting are those Dürer commonly used, including the ultramarine blue Dürer frequently favoured.⁶¹ Although the condition of both sides of the painting is very good, the ultramarine blue robe of the saint has deteriorated from its original condition, distorting the three‐dimensional manner in which the folds of the robe were originally depicted, making the darkest, shadowed parts appear light, and greatly reducing the appearance of solidity with which the figure would originally have been endowed.⁶² Some of the original effect may be seen in an old copy of the painting (see Copies (2), above).⁶³

The inability to detect any underdrawing with the aid of infrared reflectography is not without precedent. Although infrared reflectography of some larger paintings by Dürer shows evidence of very detailed preparatory drawing, with hatching comparable to that seen in Dürer’s graphic work, in other small works the underdrawing is detailed only in part, or is sketchier. It is possible in some instances, such as in the case of NG 6563, that the medium used for underdrawing cannot be detected using infrared imaging.⁶⁴

The basis for the attribution of the painting to Dürer first published in 1957 by Carritt and by Schilling (see above) was the close connection between the lion in the Saint Jerome (figs 43–5 (a, b, c)) and Dürer’s study on parchment of a standing lion inscribed with the date 1494 and generally accepted as an autograph work (Hamburg, see Related Work, fig. 5).⁶⁵ The fact that the Hamburg lion is particularly highly finished (with very fine gold highlights on the fur) and was executed on a parchment support has suggested that it was intended for some special purpose, but it is more likely to have formed part of the range of studies Dürer kept in his workshop and referred to when creating other works.⁶⁶ It is usually assumed that the Hamburg study was not made after a real animal (which Dürer probably first saw later, in the imperial menagerie at Ghent in 1521), but was adapted from paintings, drawings, sculpture or engravings made by other artists. The depiction of the flowing mane, the intense, even sympathetic stare, and the scale are all especially convincing, although as Metzger notes the lion's pose is illogical, positioned between motion and a standing pose. It also has unusually pointed ears.⁶⁷ It has been suggested that the left foreleg was deliberately obscured on the presumption that it was not visible in his model; it is also not evident in NG 6563, where the lion appears to be recumbent rather than standing as in the study.⁶⁸ The lion in NG 6563 closely resembles the lion in the Hamburg study, although it has been slightly adapted: in particular the extent of the mane is reduced, and the distance between chin and foreleg compressed, so that the animal lies down and fits better into the small compass of the composition. Care has been [page 266] taken so that the tail of the lion appears in the centre of the composition, reducing the effect of compression.

Several features of both the figure and the landscape of NG 6563 are closely comparable to works designed or painted by Dürer in the 1490s and very early 1500s (the dating of the painting is discussed further below). For example, the three minute flecks of white paint on the pupil and iris of Saint Jerome's proper right eye might be intended to indicate part of a four‐paned window (fig. 19), a feature of works by Dürer including the Prado and Munich self portraits, although it does not appear to be a consistent trait in other works of the period.⁶⁹ The treatment of the flesh (though slightly worn) is comparable to the painting of the hands and face of the Karlsruhe Christ as the Man of Sorrows [page 267] (fig. 36), usually dated to around 1493–4, particularly in the shaping of the veins standing out on the backs of the hands and the modelling of the face and the muscles of the arm with white paint (fig. 46).⁷⁰ The muscular and slightly over‐long arms of Christ are also comparable, as is the treatment of the figures and articulation of limbs in, for example, Dürer’s engraving of the Prodigal Son and the drawing for this, usually dated to around 1496 (fig. 47).⁷¹

There are many parallels between the landscape in NG 6563 and other oil paintings and watercolour studies by Dürer.⁷² Aspects of the landscape can be compared to those in the backgrounds of the Portrait of Oswald Krell in Munich of 1498, with its rhythmically shaped trees, the Washington Virgin and Child of 1496–9 (fig. 48) with its bushier trees advancing up the rock‐faces to the left of both obverse and reverse, and to the very similar representation of tufts of grass in the foreground of the reverse, as well as to the landscape of the Prado Self Portrait, also dated 1498. The distant sunlit snow‐capped mountains, river or lake, and trees of the latter are very similar to those of the Saint Jerome. The abbreviated manner in which the small high‐lit branches of the fir tree in the foreground of the landscape [page 268] are tilted against each other at jaunty angles is very close to the way in which similar trees are represented, also on a small scale, in the Saint Jerome.There are also numerous parallels between the manner of the painting of details of trees and foliage in the Saint Jerome with those in the Glimm Lamentation of around 1500 (fig. 49), notably the outlining of the tree stump with a thin dark line of paint, particularly characteristic of Dürer’s painting style (figs 51, 52), as well as the manner in which the foliage of foreground plants, grass and background trees is painted in rhythmic parallel strokes. The way in which trees and plants are placed in silhouette on the tops of the cliff on the right and on the horizon on the left, emerging over the top, is also closely comparable in both the Saint Jerome and the Lamentation, despite the differences in scale.

The representation of the strata of a rocky cliff on the right‐hand side of NG 6563 (fig. 27), with trees perched on top of it, their fibrous roots extending over the cliff edge, closely resembles other, more detailed coloured landscape studies, for example those of quarries near Nuremberg (fig. 50 and Berlin) where the projecting bare branches find echoes in those on top of the cliff on the right of the painting, as do those visible sprouting at the edge of a cliff in another study in Milan.⁷³ Similar roots overhanging the cliff are found in the Hamburg study of a lion (fig. 5).⁷⁴ On the left of NG 6563, close to the monastery spire, Dürer has carefully disposed contrasting types of evergreen as well as a silhouetted deciduous tree. Such effects echo the striking disposition of trees seen in the study of a quarry at Milan.⁷⁵ The church spire in Saint Jerome is closely comparable to the depiction of spires in the Haller Gate watercolour (fig. 53).⁷⁶

The depiction of the sky in the Saint Jerome is extremely similar to the treatment of the atmospheric sky at sunset in the Pond in the Woods in the British Museum (fig. 54), usually dated to 1496–7.⁷⁷ The observation of the trailing clouds with their intermittently brilliant illumination below from the low rays of the sun, as well as the depiction of fir trees and foliage by the side of water, are comparable to the sky and vegetation of NG 6563. The emphasis on the sky and on the conjuring of the lonely expanse of the saint’s desert may also be compared to a similarly evocative study, the Willow Mill at Sunset (Louvre), as well as the Weierhaus in the British Museum, with its sweep of sky and water.⁷⁸

The contrast between the meticulous painting of the front and the much bolder approach to the reverse can be paralleled by other doubled‐sided paintings, the portraits of Dürer’s parents (although not all scholars have agreed both sides are his work) with their dramatic scenes of stormy hellscapes (figs 34, 35) and, in particular, those in Karlsruhe with what may be an agate or a representation of the light of the Resurrection on the reverse (fig. 37) and in Washington, showing the Virgin and Child on the front and Lot and his Daughters on the reverse (fig. 39).⁷⁹ The latter, freely painted in a manner which has been compared to watercolour, shows the Old Testament subject of Lot and his daughters fleeing from the burning of Sodom, and Lot’s wife turning into a pillar of salt. The painting here is thin, as with NG 6563 there is no discernible preparatory ground, and no underdrawing has been detected. Its freedom – and its depiction of the burning city – gives it much in common with the strange fiery reverse of the Saint Jerome. The bold spattered technique used for the reverse of NG 6563, though not precisely mirrored in other works, can be paralleled in the experimentation with painted surfaces noted in a number of paintings from the earlier part of Dürer’s career.⁸⁰ There are at least three known copies or versions of NG 6563, of which the most significant may be the limestone sculpture probably created in Augsburg in 1510–15 and attributed to Hans Daucher (about 1485–1538) by Jolly; it was first recorded in Munich in 1598 (see Copies and Versions).⁸¹ A larger painted version has been attributed to Altdorfer (see Copies and Versions). Anzelewsky suggested woodcuts by Baldung and Cranach were influenced by the composition (although this remains uncertain).⁸² NG 6563 may have been well known in its time, and the existence of early copies might well testify to the reputation of an image known to have been created by Dürer himself.

Date

Most scholars have dated the Saint Jerome to the earliest decade of Dürer’s activity, the 1490s, and particularly to the years just after the journey to Italy Dürer is thought to have undertaken in 1494–5, which saw his establishment as a master in Nuremberg, a period of rapid and intense development.⁸³ The parallels with oil paintings and watercolour studies mentioned above are suggestive of a date in the mid‐ to late 1490s. Metzger has suggested a slightly earlier period, around 1494, the date on the study of the lion in Hamburg on which the painting closely depends and the time of Dürer’s return to Nuremberg from his journeyman years but before his departure to Italy.⁸⁴ There is, however, a paucity of dated and securely datable work from the 1490s with which to make comparisons, particularly on panel, although, as described above, many parallels can be drawn with details of landscape depictions on paper associated with the period of Dürer’s travels in 1494­–5, as well as with some works generally thought on stylistic grounds to date from the period following his return; comparable material which can be associated with the years before 1495 is far sparser.⁸⁵

During the first decade of his activity as an artist Dürer was constantly striving to achieve more ambitious effects with his figures. The figure of Saint Jerome can be paralleled with Christ in the Karlsruhe Christ as the Man of Sorrows (see above), usually dated to around 1494: both paintings show Dürer’s interest in representing the muscles of the arm, and both Christ and the figure of the saint must have been based on a study which Dürer made and kept. The figure of Jerome may also be compared to the figure of the Prodigal Son in the drawing for the engraving of the same subject (usually dated to around 1496), which reveals some awkwardness in the pose attributable to Dürer’s experimentation and ambition, showing the kneeling figure seen partly from the rear and swathed with folds of drapery, the head looking upwards (fig. 47).⁸⁶ A similar awkwardness is visible in the figures of the early engraving of the Virgin with the Dragonfly [page 271] (usually dated to about 1494–5), in the arms of the Virgin, the articulation of the head of the Christ Child and in the figure of Joseph (fig. 55). But it can also be seen in the child in the Washington Haller Madonna (fig. 38) (usually dated to about 1496–9), particularly the articulation of the right arm. Dürer constantly shows such figures from a deliberately remote viewpoint: it is notable that the figure of Christ on the crucifix in NG 6563 is shown from the back, at an extreme angle, so that it is only just recognisable.

Dürer’s landscape composition in NG 6563 can be compared to motifs in works associated with both the earlier and the later 1490s. For example, as mentioned above, the rocks on the right of the painting can be compared to the various depiction of stone quarries associated with the putative journey to Italy in 1494–5 and Dürer’s return to Nuremberg.⁸⁷ However, such a rock face (as well as spires similar to that of the monastery) is also a feature of the very early drawing Rock Cliffs in a Landscape with Gothic Spires, with its stylised rock formations and buildings, dated on grounds of style to around 1490–2, a drawing which could be referred to in the workshop for creating wilderness in representations of Saint Jerome.⁸⁸ Some of Dürer’s studies of Alpine towns can be associated with the geography of his journey of 1494–5, while his studies of Nuremberg have generally been dated to the period of his return, but the study of the Haller Gate with its spires, which can be compared to the clarity of the monastery spire in NG 6563, may date from around 1494.⁸⁹ As Dürer was compiling material to be used in various works throughout the early stages of his career it is unsurprising that similar motifs should recur. However, his studies were increasingly taken directly taken from nature, and the way in which he used such material developed so that studies were integrated into cohesive and atmospheric compositions, rather than being used in an additive way more typical of earlier artists. Metzger has persuasively pointed to the ways in which aspects of NG 6563, such as the emphasis on detail, seem to belong to the period in which Dürer was strongly influenced by Schongauer, although the depiction of atmosphere and the articulation of the figure have moved beyond this early source of inspiration.⁹⁰ By contrast Metzger sees the engraved Saint Jerome (fig. 42), usually dated to around 1496, as now wholly dependent on the experiences of nature which Dürer had himself recorded, though he is still experimenting with the articulation of space.⁹¹ In the engraving there is certainly a more spatially convincing transition from foreground to background while in NG 6563 there is little room left for middle ground: the tighter relationship between figure and setting serves to obscure it. Here the individual motifs such as the church spire, the crucifix, the cliff, the birds and the plants, all of which were presumably based on studies kept in Dürer’s workshop, are above all unified by the atmospheric sky.

In the sunset or sunrise on the obverse and the celestial explosion on the reverse the Saint Jerome represents vivid and impressive natural phenomena in the most accomplished and innovative manner. The evocation of sunset in the British Museum Pond in the Woods as well as in the Willow Mill is particularly close to the atmospheric sky on the obverse of the Saint Jerome. These studies are usually dated to around 1496–7 on stylistic grounds.⁹² The imagery of the reverse of NG 6563 finds a particular parallel in the blazing visual dramas – images of flames, clouds and fiery stars – expressed in black and white in Dürer’s great series of Apocalypse woodcuts published in 1498, and which Dürer must have been planning following his return from Italy in 1495. In the woodcut of the Seven Angels, for example, a star has fallen to earth and a blazing mountain has been hurled into the sea, while in the Whore of Babylon an angel has thrown a stone into the city of Babylon on the right, and the city sinks into the sea in a mass of flames (fig. 56). Although the media of the woodcuts and painting are entirely different, they share an extraordinary kinetic energy and intensity. The depiction of the burning city of Sodom on the reverse of the Haller Madonna in Washington mirrors in reverse the scene in the Whore of Babylon woodcut, and can also be compared to the reverse of the Saint Jerome: the Washington painting is generally dated to about 1496–9.⁹³ The ambition [page 272] of these images and the bravura manner of the painting of the reverse of NG 6563 distinguish themselves in this way from the more restrained though still highly imaginative reverses of the portrait of Dürer’s parents and the Karlsruhe Christ as the Man of Sorrows. The bold imagery of the reverse of NG 6563 is paralleled by a suitably innovative approach to its creation. The paint is rapidly applied, with swift broad brushstrokes for the heavenly bodies and an extraordinary spattering with a loaded brush, a technique used by Italian contemporaries of Dürer to create marbling in particular. It is conceivable that Dürer learnt such a technique in Italy in 1494–5.⁹⁴

The dating of NG 6563 either to the period just at the end of Dürer’s journeyman years in 1494 and before the visit to Italy, or after his return to Nuremberg in 1495, is finely balanced. The only fixed point for dating the painting is Dürer’s use of his study of the lion which bears the date 1494. NG 6563 may well date from that same year, rather than two to three years later, but it is hard to be definitive in the absence of dated comparative material, and a date of 1495 or 1496 should still be considered. In NG 6563 Dürer appears to demonstrate a growing stylistic maturity, associated with the use of studies made directly from nature and with an increased confidence in representing the human figure (which can be related to the small number of dated paintings from the end of the 1490s). His use of ultramarine, expensive and difficult to source in Nuremberg, might also point to a dating after his Italian journey.⁹⁵ Although the depiction of atmospheric landscape, including the sunset or sunrise skies seen here, was certainly well established in northern Europe – not only in the Low Countries but also in paintings from the Upper Rhineland, which Dürer visited in 1492–4 (see NG 4901, Saint John, in the present catalogue) – the manner in which it so vividly and convincingly pervades and unifies this small painting is wholly exceptional. The lyrical yet precise depiction of the natural world on the obverse makes an extraordinary contrast with the way in which the images of flames, clouds and fiery stars which will later be seen in the Apocalypse woodcuts published in 1498 are depicted on the reverse to form a startling and suitably transcendent image of the end of the world. While the apocalyptic reverse of the Saint Jerome shows Dürer at the height of his imaginative innovations in this early period, the image of the saint himself represents a newly vivid and atmospheric interpretation of his penitence.

Select Bibliography

Anzelewsky 1991, pp. 127–9, no. 14; National Gallery Report, April 1996–March 1997, pp. 14–15; Schröder and Sternath 2003, pp. 212–17; Sander 2013, pp. 72–3, no. 2.26; Metzger 2019, pp. 98–103, no. 19.

Notes

7 Acquired 1930 from an unknown Italian private collection: Hiller, Vey and Falk 1969, pp. 53–4, inv. 844. See Buchner 1930, pp. 161–9. According to Grossmann 1961, no. 108, in the 1957 Cologne catalogue as Danube School, omitted from the 1959 catalogue; discussed in Koetser 1958, p. 46. Also reproduced by Anzelewsky 1991, p. 127. Conceivably to be identified with the painting on wood from the collection of the Margravine Augusta Sibylla of Baden‐Baden described as by Dürer representing Saint Jerome in the Wilderness surrounded by many animals, which was sold at Offenburg, Germany in a sale on 8 May 1775 and the following days. Described as ‘2 schuh 9 zoll [page [273]] [page 274] high and 1 schuh 10½ zoll wide’, it is much too large to be identified with NG 6563 but the measurements appear similar to those of the Cologne painting, Lugt 2408. Getty Provenance Index , Sale Catalog D‐A86, lot 0258. (Back to text.)