--- title: Saint Jerome at Prayer subtitle: thumbnail: ../../thumbs/CAT1-thumb.jpg section: documents logo: bosch weight: 1 cat: 1 --- #### [Catalogue Raisonné](https://data01.universumdigitalis.com/bosch/data/PDF/CAT1.pdf) [Technical Study](https://data01.universumdigitalis.com/bosch/data/PDF/CAT1RR.pdf) # Saint Jerome at Prayer$\tiny{^{[\text{CAT1}]}}$
**Hieronymus Bosch** c. 1485–95 Oil on oak panel, 80 x 60.7 cm Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent, 1908-H BRCP examination and documentation data: Ghent, 22–24 November 2010; BRCP, _Technical Studies_, cat. 1, RR 2.
Hieronymus Bosch, Saint Jerome at Prayer, c. 1485–95, Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent.
Hieronymus Bosch, Saint Jerome at Prayer, c. 1485–95, Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent.
## Condition The panel is cropped at top and bottom. The barbs and unpainted edges at both sides indicate that the painting originally had an engaged frame. The panel reverse has been thinned considerably and cradled, although two small areas of the original reverse, underneath the transferred wax seals, have survived. Losses are concentrated along the two joins and the crack at bottom centre, but ground and paint layers are generally stable and in good condition. The paint surface is abraded in places, especially at impastoed paint tops and the sky. Light paints have increased in transparency, for example in the tree at upper left, and copper-green lakes have turned brown. The degraded varnish, discoloured retouchings and partly overpainted background hills and sky cause a reduced legibility of the generally well-preserved original paint surface. Conservation issues were addressed in the 2015 full treatment of the painting. ## Provenance French private collection (Colbert family seal) (ad causas seal of the town of Merville, Nord-Pas-de-Calais); English private collection (?); 1908 Ghent: purchased at auction, Galerie Fiévez, 11 April 1908, by Mr Peypers, Antwerp; from his collection to the Vrienden van het Museum van Gent, and donated by this museum friends' society to the museum through the art dealer E. De Coninck, Brussels, and Georges Hulin de Loo, Ghent. ## Literature BRCP, _Technical Studies_, cat. 1, RR 2; Fischer 2013, 23, 240–41; Falkenburg 2012, 85–105; Koreny 2012, 28, 95; Van Waadenoijen 2007, 92–96; Silver 2006, 218–20; Klein 2001, 124; Koldeweij, Vandenbroeck and Vermet 2001, 22, 88, 173; Ruppel 1988, 4–12; Marijnissen 1987, 388–93; Friedländer ENP V 1969, 52, 84; exhib. cat. Rotterdam 1936, 32; Friedländer 1927, 98, 151. ## Analysis Bosch's _Saint Jerome at Prayer_ is an intimate and personal image of the saint for whom the artist was named. The hermit-cardinal lies prostrate in an inhospitable landscape, with nothing but discipline and religious devotion to shield him from distractions and sinister urges. For the time being, Jerome has won this inner struggle and is able – pure and unsullied – to focus his full attention on the crucifix he embraces fervently in his arms. The wilderness into which Jerome has withdrawn not only illustrates a passage from his vita, it also refers to the saint's name, which is translated in the _Passionael_ – a popular Middle Dutch version of Jacopo de Voragine's _Legenda aurea_ ('Golden Legend') – as 'sacred grove' or 'holy wood' (_heilig bosch_). The fact that the artist chose the same toponym (bosch) as his professional surname seems, therefore, to allude to more than just the city of 's-Hertogenbosch where he lived and worked.
## Saint Jerome Saint Jerome stretches out on the ground in an ominous landscape, praying with utter absorption to Christ. He embraces the crucifix with both arms, his hands clasped together, and his eyes closed. Jerome is positioned at the centre of this panel – one of Bosch's greatest achievements.[1] The painter has carefully arranged a series of visual elements around the hermit, which refer to both his worldly and his spiritual life. Jerome was born in Stridon, Dalmatia, around 345 ce. Following a classical education and a career in the Church in Rome, he decided to withdraw into the Syrian desert. He wrote vividly of this period of isolation and penitence in one of his letters to Eustochium – a pious woman who had sought his spiritual guidance. The same passage is quoted in the _Legenda aurea_, and must also have inspired Bosch as he painted this panel: 'Now, although in my fear of hell I had consigned myself to this prison, where I had no companions but scorpions and wild beasts, I often found myself amid bevies of girls. My face was pale and my frame chilled with fasting. I do not blush to avow my abject misery; rather I lament that I am not now what once I was. I remember how I often cried aloud all night till the break of day and ceased not from beating my breast till tranquillity returned at the chiding of the Lord.'[2] The rock with which he has just chastised himself lies nearby. Jerome meditates on the physical torments suffered by Christ, while wrestling with his own earthly desires. His resemblance to the Saviour – also visually to some extent – cleanses him of the blemish represented by his physical urges.[3] The idea of purification is alluded to in the background as well, where a woman washes her clothes in the river; they are the same immaculate white as Jerome's robe and Christ's loincloth. The saint's red cassock is draped over a hollow tree trunk and his cardinal's hat lies on the ground nearby. Both attributes recall the time he spent in Rome at the age of twenty-nine as secretary to the pope. The idea of Jerome as a cardinal, even though no such rank existed in his era, probably derived in the mid-fourteenth century from Johannes Andreae's _Hieronymianus_, following which it rapidly established itself more widely. From the second half of the fourteenth century onwards, therefore, Jerome – who enjoyed great prestige throughout the Middle Ages as a Church Father and Bible translator – was frequently depicted not only as a scholar in his study, but also as a cardinal.[4]
1.1 In prayer.
1.2 Washing and bleaching.
A closed book lies between the cassock and the cardinal's hat or _galero_. According to tradition, Jerome took his library with him into the wilderness and some compositions therefore show him reading in the open air. In this case, the book is an attribute alluding to his learning and to the many years he spent on his Vulgate translation, which he began at a monastery in Bethlehem after spending four years in the wilderness.[5] The lion on the left of the scene recalls his period in Bethlehem. Jerome extracted a thorn from its paw, following which the now-tame animal became his faithful companion.[6]
1.3 The lion, Jerome’s attribute.
The lion, cardinal's hat, book, rock and crucifix are all standard attributes in images of the penitent Saint Jerome praying in the wilderness – a type that originated around 1400 in northern Italy and became immensely popular in the fifteenth century. The emergence of this iconography might reflect the foundation of several Hieronymite orders in the second half of the fourteenth century. Asceticism and penance were central to their religious life, alongside devotion to the Passion of Christ.[7] Jerome's popularity in the Low Countries increased sharply in the fifteenth century under the influence of the Devotio Moderna. The Brethren of the Common Life adopted him as their patron, and founded Hieronymite houses,[8] including one in 's-Hertogenbosch in 1425.[9] Images of the penitent Jerome begin to appear in the Low Countries too from the mid-fifteenth century onwards. The type might have been introduced by Rogier van der Weyden, following his time in Rome and his visit to Ferrara. Jerome was especially important in Ferraran humanist circles at the court of Lionello d'Este, and he was also the patron saint of the Gesuati.[10] Whatever their origins, images of Saint Jerome in the wilderness had grown so numerous in Italy by the second half of the fifteenth century that the new iconography arrived in northern Europe via several routes simultaneously. It was also disseminated, for instance, through woodcuts in Bibles and editions of the _Legenda aurea_.[11] Late-medieval images of Saint Jerome in the wilderness almost always show him kneeling, with his eyes fixed on the crucified Christ and beating himself on the chest with a rock. Bosch's treatment of the theme in the Ghent painting deviates from this visual tradition; here the moment of physical mortification has passed, and the focus has shifted from the external to the internal. Sinful thoughts have been banished, creating the space for meditation, prayer and submission; Jerome, his eyes closed, summons up the image of Christ before his 'inner eye'.[12] The late-medieval viewer could imagine the saint poring over Christ's body in his thoughts in remembrance of his suffering. The crucifix aided this exercise, which became a widespread meditative technique under the influence of the Devotio Moderna.[13] The image of Saint Jerome exhorts the worshipper to close his or her eyes to all worldly temptations. In this particular instance, the crucifix might even be interpreted as the physical manifestation of a vision, as Bosch only added it to the composition at a very late stage of the painting process; it was not included in the underdrawing and was only painted after the background and the figure of Saint Jerome had already been completed. ![1.4 Jacobus de Voragine, Das duytsche Passionael (Legenda aurea), Lübeck (Steffen Arndes) 1507: Repenting Saint Jerome. Woodcut. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich.](cat1/CR_1_4.jpg) ## Nature and landscape Hermits were a favourite theme of Bosch's and lent themselves perfectly to nature scenes.[14] The wildness of Jerome's surroundings in the Ghent panel is emphasized by the contrast with the brightly lit, peaceful and cultivated landscape, complete with bleaching fields, in the background. 'I used to dread my very cell as though it knew my thoughts; and, stern and angry with myself, I used to make my way alone into the desert,' Jerome wrote in his aforementioned letter to Eustochium. 'Wherever I saw hollow valleys, craggy mountains, steep cliffs, there I made my oratory, there the house of correction for my unhappy flesh.['15] The strange rock formation with its thorny plants where he has sought shelter is, indeed, a less than reassuring abode. Other elements too in the scene have a sinister and admonitory character, such as the mauled remains of a cockerel in the lower left, which evidently got a little too close to the innocent-looking fox sleeping nearby; or the large, hollow tree trunk with an owl on one of its branches, gazing steadily at the viewer. Precisely the same elements are found in a different context, but to similar effect, in the drawing _The Wood Has Ears, The Field Has Eyes_, which comes close to the essence of Bosch's artistic practice (cat. 37).[16] Dead branches and withered trees regularly appear in his work, mostly with a negative connotation. They even come to life on occasion and are given a face, as in the anthropomorphic trees in the _Tree-Man_ drawing, in the right wing of the _Garden of Earthly Delights_ and in the panels of the _Saint Anthony Triptych_ in Lisbon (cat. 35, 21, 4). Temptation appears in the right wing of the latter work in the guise of a naked woman peering out from the trunk of a dead tree. A thick red and white liquid, painted wet-in-wet and unmistakably alluding to bodily fluids, oozes from the surface of the wood, which the woman touches with her hand.
1.5 Sleeping fox.
1.6
Jerome is surrounded in the Ghent panel by dead branches and withered tree trunks, yet the saint embraces the wooden cross, which was linked in the Middle Ages with the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden. Jerome himself made a similar analogy in one of his letters to Pope Damasus: 'This is the peace through which we are reconciled with God, for we are reconciled to him by the Lord Jesus, who redeemed our sins and obliterated the evidence that testified against us and threatened us with death by nailing it to the cross, and who openly humiliated governments and powers when he triumphed over them on the tree.'[17] Dead trees appear regularly in images of the penitent Jerome from the late fifteenth century onwards.[18] In some cases, the connection with the crucifix is represented very explicitly, as the cross is fixed to a dead tree or placed directly in front of it. That is the case in the central panel of the _Hermit Saints Triptych_ (cat. 2), in which a green branch grows from the stump as a symbol of new life through Christ's death on the cross. ![1.7 Garden of Earthly Delights (cat. 21C).](cat1/CR_1_7.jpg) ![1.8 Tree-Man (cat. 35).](cat1/CR_1_8.jpg)
1.9 Temptation of Saint Anthony (cat. 4A)
1.10 Temptation of Saint Anthony (cat. 4B).
1.11 Saint Anthony Triptych (cat. 4C).
## Holy wood It is safe to assume that Hieronymus Bosch felt a special affinity with Saint Jerome, his namesake. The account of Jerome's life in the _Legenda aurea_ begins with an explanation of the different meanings of his name: 'Hieronymus dicitur a gerar, quod est sanctum, et nemus, quasi sanctum nemus.'[19] Jerome (Hieronymus in Latin) can be read, Jacobus de Voragine tells the reader, as 'sacred grove' or 'holy wood'. Johannes Andreae repeats this etymology almost verbatim in his _Hieronymianus_,[20] a Middle Dutch translation of which states: 'Iheronimus es gheseit van ierar Dats heylich. Ende nemus dats bosch. Want hi was een heylich bosch.'[21] The rendering of nemus here as bosch clearly appealed to the painter, as it meant the professional surname he had adopted referred both to his forename and to the city in which he lived.[22] It was not only his first name that enabled Bosch to identify with Jerome; in his letters, the future saint had demonstrated a keen ability to pillory the misconduct of people at every level of society, from the common folk to the clergy. It was this aspect that appealed to Erasmus, who admired Saint Jerome's erudition and piety, and who published and commented on his letters in 1516.[23] Margaret Sullivan has shown how Christian humanists like Erasmus drew on the classical genre of satire, and how Jerome's adaptation of the genre to the Christian context served to link the satirists of antiquity with the humanist authors of the late fifteenth century. In Sullivan's view, Bosch's visual satires belong to this same tradition.[24] Jerome's moralism and his religious commitment combined to make him a worthy model for Bosch, whose work depicts sinful and immoral behaviour while simultaneously expressing profound religious devotion. The way Bosch poses Jerome in the Ghent panel, embracing the crucifix, is rare in images of this saint; it is reminiscent of the iconography associated with Mary Magdalene, for whom a similarly intimate position was reserved in Crucifixion scenes,[25] in which she is often shown throwing her arms passionately around the base of the cross.[26] Jerome actually compares himself with Mary Magdalene in his letter to Eustochium, where he describes how he found himself at Christ's feet while doing penance. 'My face was pale and my frame chilled with fasting; yet my mind was burning with desire, and the fires of lust kept bubbling up before me when my flesh was as good as dead. Helpless, I cast myself at the feet of Jesus, I watered them with my tears, I wiped them with my hair.'[27] Jerome's intimate relationship with Christ forms the essence of Bosch's panel, which is precisely what distinguishes the work from other images of the penitent saint. The latter's own allusion to Mary Magdalene – who, according to ecclesiastical tradition, had repented her immoral behaviour – is an apt one for his famous letter to Eustochium, of which the central theme is chastity. The letter, which Jerome himself described as a 'little book' (_libellus_), is sometimes given the subtitle De _virginitate servanda_ because of the advice it offers Eustochium on preserving her virginity.[28] Drawing on his own experiences in the wilderness, Jerome seeks to persuade her of the importance of both mental and physical purity. The central panel of the _Hermit Saints Triptych_ in Venice (cat. 2) shows that Bosch was aware of Jerome's ideal of celibacy; it features a number of details that symbolize chastity, including the depiction of the deuterocanonical figure of Judith and the taming of the unicorn. The Ghent painting differs from the Venice triptych, however, in that the emphasis here is not so much on Jerome's personal struggle, but on repentance and forgiveness. It is precisely this that fosters Jerome's intimate position with respect to Christ. Bosch shows the viewer of the panel a way to escape a corrupt world.
1.12
## References 1. Koreny recently challenged the panel's attribution to Bosch (Koreny 2012, 28). We see no justification for this, however. The style of the underdrawing too is entirely consistent with that of several other generally accepted paintings. 2. Letter to Eustochium (no. 22), Tazelaar 2008, I, 118 (English translation: http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001022.htm). _Passionael. Somerstuc_ 1482, fol. 204v-06v. 3. For Jerome's imitation of Christ, see Ruppel 1988. 4. Wiebel 1988, 5. 5. Jerome (c. 340–420) translated the Old Testament (excluding the Psalms), the Apocrypha (excluding Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch and First and Second Maccabees) and the New Testament for Pope Damasus I (366–383). 6. The little circles we now detect in both the lion and elsewhere in the painting were not intended by the artist, but resulted from the ageing of the paint film. 7. Meiss 1976; Ridderbos 1984, 63–88; Rice 1985, 76–83; Russo 1987, 201–51. 8. Smithuis 1996, 19. 9. Koldeweij, Vandenbroeck and Vermet 2001, 22. 10. The saint is shown doing penance in the background of the small panel with Saint Jerome and the lion (c. 1450) in Detroit. For the significance of Saint Jerome in Ferrara, see Barstow 2000, 165. 11. The Middle Dutch Bible published by Steffen Arndes in Lübeck in 1494, for instance, and the Latin Bible published in Nuremberg in 1501 by Anton Koberger. Editions of the _Passionael_ with a woodcut of the penitent Saint Jerome were printed in 1488 by Anton Koberger (in German) and in 1492 by Steffen Arndes (in Low German). Gerard Leeu published the _Psalterium Sancti Hieronymi_ in Antwerp in 1492, with an image of the penitent Saint Jerome. See also the notes on Saint Jerome in cat. 2. 12. This expression can be found verbatim in medieval texts, including 'The Four Extremes', in which readers are also exhorted to picture the terrors of hell in order to shield themselves from future sin. See also Falkenburg 2012 on insien and uutsien. 13. This meditation technique and the worshipper's relationship with devotional objects are dealt with by Rudy 2000, 128–29. 14. See Friedmann 1980 for a discussion of the flora and fauna in images of Saint Jerome. 15. Letter to Eustochium (no. 22), Tazelaar 2008, I, 118. 16. Ilsink 2009, 34ff. 17. 'Pax vero qua reconciliati Deo sumus, habentes propitiatorem Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum, qui donavit nobis delictanostra; et delevit chirographum mortis, quod erat contra nos, affigens illud cruci: et principatus et potestates fecit ostentui, triumphans eas in ligno.' Letter to Damasus (no. 21). Donahue Kuretsky 1974, 573. 18. Donahue Kuretsky 1974. 19. All the (Latin) editions of the _Legenda aurea_ consulted by the author begin the account of Saint Jerome's life with an explanation of the meaning of his name. This element is omitted in the printed editions (in Middle Dutch) of the _Passionael_ referred to for this study. 20. 'Hieronymus a hiera quod est sanctum, et nemus, quasi sanctum nemus.' Johannes Andreae, _Hieronymianus_, Cologne (Conrad Winters) 1482, fol. 12. 21. Ghent, Universiteitsbibliotheek, ms. 904, fol. 10v; ms 529, fol. 212v. Reynaert 1996, 69; Marijnissen 2000, 40. 22. Ilsink 2009 further explores the Bosch/'s-Hertogenbosch association, extending it to include boos ('evil') and the owl as a bird of the forest (bosvogel). 23. See Bietenholz 1989 on Erasmus and Saint Jerome. 24. Sullivan 2008, 121–28. 25. Barstow 2000, 177. 26. See, for instance, the closed wings of the Adoration of the Magi in the Prado (cat. 9). 27. Letter to Eustochium (no. 22), Tazelaar 2008, I, 118. 28. Tazelaar 2008, I, 112. The letter was published as a booklet in Nuremberg in 1493.