Jan Sanders van Hemessen

This representation of Saint Jerome was painted by one of the leading and most original painters working in Antwerp during the mid-16th century, Jan Sanders van Hemessen. It is one of around twenty signed and dated works by the artist (all on panel), and was painted in 1548, the year in which he became Dean of the Painter's Guild of Saint Luke in Antwerp.

The high demand for devotional images of Saint Jerome in the Southern Netherlands during the mid-16th century was partly in response to the dictamens of the Counter-Reformation and Hemessen treated the theme on at least seven other occasions, many of which follow the half-length format adopted in the present work (see, for example, Friedländer, under Literature, nos. 210-215, reproduced plates 114-15). Although the artist's early work is characterised by the assimilation of influences from classical antiquity and the Renaissance, following a trip to Italy during the 1620s, the present work is a clear essay in northern realism, continuing in the tradition of the work of Quentin Metsys, Joos van Cleve and Marinus van Reymerswaele.

The monumental, almost life-size figure of Saint Jerome dominates the surrounding landscape which, combined with the distinctive and highly individual physiognomy (almost certainly taken from life), gives the image a great sense of immediacy and directness and imbues the figure with a profound psychology, reminiscent of Durer's celebrated work of Saint Jerome in his Study, painted during a visit to Antwerp in 1521 and today in the Museu de Arte Antiga, Lisbon. The remarkable detail with which the ageing features of the Saint are portrayed reveal this to be an image of great sensitivity and religious fervour by one of Antwerp's most idiosyncratic artists of the 16th century.