I like a bit of medieval and Renaissance religious art, namely because there’s something intriguing about something that has been revered by generations. This painting shows St. Jerome (or St. Hieronymus as he’s also known) looking like he’s a Cardinal, although he wasn’t as they hadn’t really been invented at that time. The word invented probably isn’t the religious way of describing the evolution of the Cardinal process, but I like it. The book shows he likes writing and I’m not sure why he’s holding a miniature church, I assume that’s because he founded them rather than he likes making them out of matchsticks.
The gallery doesn’t know who painted it, it’s just attributed to a central European painter from the second half of the sixteenth century. It’s also not known whether this would have been in a church or used as a private devotional painting.`As an aside, the gallery also note that it uses tempera which isn’t really in keeping with the date they’ve given to the artwork, but perhaps it was a bit of an artistic backwater that oil paints hadn’t yet reached….