Saint Jerome in the Wilderness – (Bonifazio Veronese (Bonifazio De Pitati)) ◄ Previous Next ►

Artist: Bonifazio Veronese (Bonifazio De Pitati)

Date: 1585

Size: 142 x 117 cm

Technique: Oil On Canvas

A sinewy older man, his pale skin mostly exposed, sits on a stone low to the ground facing a table on our right in the center of this vertical painting. His gray hair is cropped short, and he has a graying, long beard. He faces our right in profile, and has a hooked nose, deep-set eyes, and the eyebrow we can see is bushy. The man's bare chest has a red wound flecked with darker red gashes. A smooth and shiny, rose-pink cloth drapes across his thighs and falls around his bare knees, its soft folds highlighted in white. A translucent white undergarment peeks out from beneath it. In the man’s left hand, farther from us, he holds the bottom of a wooden cross against the pages of an open book, which is propped up on a skull on a wooden table. The crucifix is as tall as the book. An hourglass sits on the corner of the table just beyond that hand. He clutches a palm-sized stone in his right arm, which is slightly bent and held down by his side. His legs are bent and cramped under his body as he sits on the low stone. A small lion lies in the shadows under the table. To our left and directly behind the man looms a brown, rocky arch with two wooden slats, like a fence, across its opening. Another rocky formation fills the space through the archway, leaving a sliver of blue sky while juniper-green bushes grow around its edges. To our right, a rolling wilderness stretches away to the horizon, with soft foliage of kelly green giving way to steep hills in soft blues. Hazy white squares suggest a cluster of buildings on the distant hillside. Pale gray and white clouds float across a sky that deepens from pale pink along the horizon to vivid blue along the top edge.