St. Jerome in a Landscape

This delicately cross-hatched, naturalistic scene is quietly contemplative in mood. The manner of envisioning the figure in the foreground with a roving pastoral landscape beyond is characteristic of Venetian painting at the time of Giovanni Bellini. The composition portrays the emaciated hermit Saint Jerome, kneeling in prayer before a small crucifix in a rocky promontory, slightly off-center to the left. Seen in a profile view, the figure of the saint seems especially poignant as a lifelike, anti-classical portrayal of old age, which is indebted to Northern European art. The overall tonal modulation across the composition is especially striking because it is attained entirely by cross-hatching strokes in pen and ink, an inherently linear technique. Elements throughout the composition are outlined with jaggedly expressive contours full of tonal articulation, a graphic habit that would certainly be beyond the capacity of anyone but an artist of the first rank.

(Carmen C. Bambach, 2001)