This dramatic image of St Jerome shows the anguished hermit saint in the desert, clinging to the rocky ground, with his emblematic lion at his feet. The angular facial features, strained physiognomy and trailing strands of hair are characteristic of Juan de Valmaseda, a prominent Spanish Renaissance sculptor and contemporary of Alonso Berruguete (circa 1490-1561). Influenced by Felipe Bigarny (circa 1475-1543) and Diego de Siloé (circa 1495-1563), his early commissions were in Burgos, Oviedo and León. However, it was in Palencia that he secured his reputation through his work on the High Altar of the cathedral from 1519.

The present St Jerome compares particularly closely with sculptures on Valmaseda's Retablo de San Ildefonso executed from 1530 for the Capilla del Arcediano del Alcor in Palencia Cathedral (in situ). Compare, for example, with the relief with St Jerome which, despite having a different composition, includes a very similar lion housed within a rocky landscape. Particularly notable is the sinewy, angular, musculature in the Saint's proper left arm, which closely parallels the physiognomy of the present figure. Similar musculature and fleshtones can be observed in the relief with the Baptism of Christ from the same retable. The present saint's hair and beard, which are composed in rope-like strands, find strong parallels in Valmaseda's carvings of St Matthew and St John the Evangelist in León Cathedral (Jacob, op. cit., p. 48, figs. 6 a-b). Compositionally, the way that the saint is contained within the landscape setting is similar to a sculpture of St John the Evangelist in the Stanley Moss collection, which is attributed to Valmaseda (Stratton, op. cit., pp. 96-97, no. 9). Like this sculpture, the present carving is likely to have been housed in the predella of a larger retable.

RELATED LITERATURE
S. Jacob, 'Ein Relief von Juan de Valmaseda,' Berliner Museen, 14, H 2, 1964, pp. 44-51; S. L. Stratton, Spanish Polychrome Sculpture 1500-1800 in United States Collections, exh. cat. The Spanish Institute, New York; Meadows Museum, Dallas; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 1993, pp. 96-97

This sculpture is sold with an expertise by Dr Jesús M. Parrado del Olmo of the University of Valladolid.