Follower of Joos van Cleve

Private Collection, France.

A Flemish painter active mostly in Antwerp, Joos van Cleve or Joos van der Beke (circa 1485–1490 – 1540/1541) is famous for his religious altarpieces and portraits. He was once known as  ‘Master of the Death of the Virgin’ for his painting Triptych of the Death of the Virgin (circa 1515, Munich, Alte Pinakothek, inv. WAF 150, WAF 151, WAF 152). He headed up a large workshop producing works that were disseminated throughout Europe and painted for the royal courts, including those of France and England. While his works are marked by the influence of Antwerp Mannerism and references to earlier Netherlandish masters, it is also possible to see in them elements taken from the Italian Renaissance, including Leonardo da Vinci. His compositions are richly coloured and expressive, with extensive landscapes in the background, sometimes produced in collaboration with Joachim Patinir.

One of his best-known works is St Jerome in his Study, a reworking of a 1521 painting by Albrecht Dürer, made in Antwerp for Ruy Fernández de Almeida, ambassador of King John III of Portugal (Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon, inv. 828 Pint). As in the original, the saint is seated at his desk, absorbed in his translation of the Bible into Latin, the Vulgate. Van Cleve echoed the position devised by Dürer: with the finger of his left hand pointing at a skull, he rests his head on his right hand. He represents the Renaissance ideal of erudition and studious solitude as well as evoking a meditation on life’s transience. Joos van Cleve brings us face to face with Jerome’s concentration and seclusion, representing an ideal for believers at the start of the Protestant Reformation.

This reworking by Van Cleve was later copied and adapted by his workshop and followers, as in the case of the present painting. Dürer’s simple interior has been replaced by that of a house. The room is lit by a window on the left side of the composition as well as by another facing the Doctor of the Church, which is outside the frame but reflected in the candlestick in the foreground. An opening in the background, behind the saint, underlines his isolation, with a village in the distance, separated from his place of study by a long road and a river.

St Jerome is portrayed as a Doctor of the Church, with a crimson galero hanging on the wall at his right, wearing a habit of the same colour and a cardinal’s biretta. He is surrounded by symbolic objects: a string of rosary beads hangs from a shelf and a pair of spectacles in the foreground highlights the saint’s intellect. The skull and the spent candle, on his right, allude to the vanity of life and a meditation on death, in the same way as a ‘Cogita Mori’ (Consider death). His work as a translator inspired by God is referenced by the quill pen and scissors used to trim it, by the open Bible in front of a crucifix facing the saint and by the many books on the shelf on the right side of the composition – including Paul’s Epistles – and the closed book behind the candlestick. The presence of the sacred is recalled in the crucifix, the incense burner and the lit candle in an alcove above St Jerome.