Sacred and legendary art, volume 1 (of 2): Containing legends of the angels and archangels, the evangelists, the Apostles, the doctors of the church, and St. Mary magdalene, as represented in the fine arts.Jameson, Mrs. (Anna)
Religion
Sacred and legendary art, volume 1 (of 2): Containing legends of the angels and archangels, the evangelists, the Apostles, the doctors of the church, and St. Mary magdalene, as represented in the fine arts.
Jameson, Mrs. (Anna)
Christian art and symbolism; Christian saints in art
The Spanish painters have rendered it with a gloomy power, and
revelled in its mystic significance. In the Spanish gallery of the
Louvre I counted at least twenty St. Jeromes: the old German painters
and engravers also delighted in it, on account of its picturesque
capabilities.
Albert Dürer represents St. Jerome kneeling before a crucifix, which he
has suspended against the trunk of a massy tree; an open book is near
it; he holds in his right hand a flint-stone, with which he is about
to strike his breast, all wounded and bleeding from the blows already
inflicted; the lion crouches behind him, and in the distance is a stag.
The penitent St. Jerome is not a good subject for sculpture; the
undraped, meagre form, and the abasement of suffering, are disagreeable
in this treatment: yet such representations are constantly met with in
churches. The famous colossal statue by Torrigiano, now in the Museum
at Seville, represents St. Jerome kneeling on a rock, a stone in one
hand, a crucifix in the other. At Venice, in the Frari, there is a
statue of St. Jerome, standing, with the stone in his hand and the lion
at his feet; too majestic for the Penitent. There are several other
statues of St. Jerome at Venice, from the Liberi and Lombardi schools,
all fine as statues; but the penitent saint is idealised into the
patron-saint of penitents.
When figures of St. Jerome as penitent are introduced in Madonna
pictures, or in the Passion of Christ, then such figures are
devotional, and symbolical, in a general sense, of Christian repentance.
There is an early picture of the Crucifixion, by Raphael,[261] in
which he has placed St. Jerome at the foot of the cross, beating his
breast with a stone(86).
[Illustration: 86 St. Jerome, as Penitent, in a Crucifixion (Raphael)]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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