It is in the double character of Doctor of the Church, and translator of the Scriptures, that we find St. Jerome so frequently introduced into pictures of the Madonna, and grouped with other saints. Two of the most celebrated pictures in the world suggest themselves here as examples:—1. ‘The Madonna della Pesce’ of Raphael; where the Virgin, seated on a raised throne, holds the Infant Christ in her arms; on her right hand, the archangel Raphael presents the young Tobias, who holds the fish, the emblem of Christianity or Baptism. On the other side kneels St. Jerome, holding an open book, his beard sweeping to his girdle; the lion at his feet; the Infant Christ, while he bends forward to greet Tobias, has one hand upon St. Jerome’s book: the whole is a beautiful and expressive allegory.[259] 2. Correggio’s picture, called ‘The St. Jerome of Parma,’ represents the Infant Christ on the knees of his mother: Mary Magdalene bends to kiss his feet: St. Jerome stands in front, presenting his translation of the Scriptures. [Illustration: 85 St. Jerome doing Penance (Titian)] The penitent St. Jerome seems to have been adopted throughout the Christian Church as the approved symbol of Christian penitence, self-denial, and self-abasement. No devotional subject, if we except the ‘Madonna and Child’ and the ‘Magdalene,’ is of such perpetual recurrence. In the treatment it has been infinitely varied. The scene is generally a wild rocky solitude: St. Jerome, half naked, emaciated, with matted hair and beard, is seen on his knees before a crucifix, beating his breast with a stone. The lion is almost always introduced, sometimes asleep, or crouching at his feet; sometimes keeping guard, sometimes drinking at a stream. The most magnificent example of this treatment is by Titian:[260] St. Jerome, kneeling on one knee, half supported by a craggy rock, and holding the stone, looks up with eager devotion to a cross, artlessly fixed into a cleft in the rock; two books lie on a cliff behind; at his feet are a skull and hour-glass; and the lion reposes in front. The feeling of deep solitude, and a kind of sacred horror breathed over this picture, are inconceivably fine and impressive. Another by Titian, but inferior, is in the Louvre; and there are at least twelve engravings of St. Jerome doing penance, after the same painter: among them a superb landscape, in which are seen a lion and a lioness prowling in the wilderness, while the saint is doing penance in the foreground. By Agostino Caracci there is a famous engraving of ‘St. Jerome doing penance in a cave,’ called from its size the _great_ St. Jerome. But to particularise further would be endless: I know scarcely any Italian painter since the fifteenth century who has not treated this subject at least once.