2. Albrecht Dürer
(1471-1528)

Saint Jerome Penitent in the Wilderness

(click on image to print)
Dürer, Saint Jerome

Saint Jerome Penitent in the Wilderness

Engraving, ca. 1496, 322x 225 mm., Bartsch 61, Meder 57 b (of g). Superb impression with great clarity and range of tone on thin laid paper though without discernible watermark, trimmed on the plate mark or barely within, the image complete; invisibly mended tears, some backed thin areas, other thin spots. Both the quality of impression and the thin paper correspond to Meder’s b impressions, presumably printed in the very early 1500s. The Cincinnati impression, reproduced in Dürer in America, also Meder b, is almost exactly comparable (but trimmed at the top, as are several other impressions). Done almost 20 years before the more famous Saint Jerome in His Study, the image here represents Jerome as he lived as a hermit in the Holy Land from 375 to 380 and the tradition of such representations developed first in Italy. Dürer’s experiences in Venice would have familiarized him with this. But the background of this engraving is based on his sketches of quarries in the neighborhood of Nuremberg. Thus do great artists combine disparate elements to produce personal visions.