St Jerome was a popular subject for painters at a certain moment in the 15th century. In the old master rooms at the National Gallery you see him again and again; a white-haired scholar, reading in a desert cave, usually with an incongruous and strangely unthreatening lion somewhere in the middle distance. There are variations: sometimes the lion sits attentively while Jerome declaims from his translation of the bible, at other times the lion has come to find Jerome in what appears to be the scriptorium of a monastery. The life of St Jerome was heavy both on corporeal works and miracles; he wrote and translated prolifically, but also found time to tame a wild lion, from whose paw he removed a thorn, and which afterwards followed him like a dog.
He is the subject of one of the strangest and most interesting pictures I've ever seen; St Jerome in his study, by Antonello da Messina. When you see the picture, that cliché often repeated of Tristam Shandy- of being postmodern before there was any modern to be post- immediately suggests itself. Its composition, all blind corners and diminishing frames within frames, could be taken from a Peter Greenaway film, as could the odd miscellany of suggestive objects that litter the painting. It immediately seems that an intricate and sophisticated symbolic game is being played, but it isn't clear what its rules are. The surfaces of Jerome's study teem with exotic birds, vases, book, and miniature plants; but the study itself, absurdly, appears to have been erected in the middle of a vast, empty church.
I can't pretend to have any professional insight into Renaissance symbolism, or theology, but I still want to attempt a close reading of the painting. As much as any other feature, what intrigues me is the multilayered space of the picture, with its oddly static characters and profusion of detail. Even sticking only to what is actually visible- resisting the urge to decode anything- there is a huge amount of ground to cover. As a survey, I suppose this is at least tangentially architectural- concerning itself with formal choices and their effects- and thus hopefully understandable on that basis.
