Saint Jerome Penitent in the Wilderness

c. 1496

Albrecht Dürer

Artist, German, 1471 - 1528

Printed with black lines on light tan paper, a balding, bearded, muscular man kneels next to a small lion in a rocky landscape in this vertical engraving. The man’s beard comes down beyond his chest, and his hair is long behind his receding hairline. His torso is bare while his lower body is wrapped in a cloth that falls in deep folds. He faces our left, gazing at a broken tree trunk with a cluster of weeds growing near its roots. A small crucifix is thrust into the broken trunk. He holds a rock in his outstretched right hand, on our left. The lion crouches next to him with his eyebrows gathered low as he looks off to our left. Beyond them, a landscape rises along either side of a path leading toward a church in the distance. On the left side are the cracked walls of a building with plants growing out the top. On the right is the craggy face of a cliff with tall, slender trees growing on its top slope. The path darkens as it passes the cliff and reaches the church to our left of center. In the far distance to the right of the cliff is a castle-like structure with square towers. Deep shadows around the man and lion and along the path are created with areas of densely spaced, black hatched lines, and unmarked areas create bright highlights. The artist signed the work with monogram made of a capital D tucked between the legs of an uppercase A.

Media Options

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Many believe that as a total body of work, the greatest art by Albrecht Dürer—and certainly his most influential—are his original prints. Dürer's earliest woodcut dates from 1492 and his first engraving from about 1495, and he quickly showed extraordinary prowess in both media. Saint Jerome Penitent in the Wilderness is datable to either 1496 or 1497, when Dürer was twenty-five or twenty-six years old. Of ambitious scale at almost 12 ½ by 9 inches, this work is the first time the artist engraved such a large copperplate.

The engraving shows Saint Jerome as a hermit doing penance in the desert. Fixing his gaze on a tiny crucifix, he beats his breast with a stone. This work presents an unusual juxtaposition: the minute details of a rocky landscape and the stark figure of the partially nude, elderly saint. Scholar Erwin Panofsky has noted that before Saint Jerome, this combination is unprecedented in northern art. This image may reflect the influence of Dürer’s first trip to Venice, where he may have seen works that joined these two subjects. For example, compare this engraving with a contemporaneous image of the saint by the Italian artist Giovanni Bellini, also in the Gallery's collection. Dürer's sophisticated, realistic details of flinty cliffs, on the other hand, speak solely of his native surroundings. In fact, he based this landscape on his early watercolor studies of quarries around his hometown of Nuremberg.

This superb impression shows Dürer’s techniques and artistic vision at their finest. In his earliest attempts, from about 1495 to 1497, the artist apparently used a richly applied coal-black ink, as seen here, but he printed very few impressions. After 1505, he tended to use a different paper with a thinner and more cleanly wiped application of ink, creating a more crisp and metallic appearance and somewhat flatter space.

By contrast, in one of the very first impressions of Saint Jerome, Dürer's original intent is immanently clear: rich, tonal contrasts that create great depth in the landscape; painterly modeling of figures, trees, and rocks; fierce expressions on the faces of Jerome and the lion; and an overall warmth of color. From this first printing, only eight or nine impressions survive. This is the only example in the United States.

Dürer made 105 copperplate prints, of which four are known only in unique or nearly singular impressions. Prior to acquiring this engaving, the National Gallery of Art owned the other 100 prints. Now, Saint Jerome Penitent in the Wilderness completes this remarkable collection.


Artwork overview


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Dr. L. Heyden, Freiburg, Saxony; (his sale, Alexander Danz, Leipzig, 9 April 1883); Baron Adalbert von Lanna [1836-1909], Prague (Lugt 2773); (his sale, H. G. Gutekunst, Stuttgart, 11-12 May 1909, lot no. 1436); Dr. Rotte(?); (Mario Uzielli, Liestal, Switzerland (until 1934 Uzielli was a partner in the dealership Tiedemann & Uzielli in Frankfurt am Main); (sale, C. G. Boerner? 2 December 1949, no. 93); (with Galerie Kornfeld, Berne); (sale, Gerd Rosen, Berlin, 11 November 1955, no. 1409); private collection, Baden Württemberg, Germany; C. G. Boerner, New York; purchased by NGA, 2011.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

2022

  • The Renaissance in the North: New Prints and Perspectives, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2022.

Bibliography

1932

  • Meder, Joseph. Dürer-Katalog; ein Handbuch über Albrecht Dürers Stiche, Radierungen, Holzschnitte, deren Zustände, Ausgaben und Wasserzeichen. Vienna: Verlag Gilhofer und Ranschburg, 1932. Reprint. New York: Da Capo Press, 1971, no. 57 A/G.

2001

  • Schoch, Rainer, Mattihas Mende, and Anna Scherbaum. Albrecht Dürer: Das druckgraphische Werk. Munich, 2001: vol. 1: no. 6.

Inscriptions

bottom center, in plate: AD [artist's monogram]

Markings

none

Watermarks

imperial orb (Meder 53)

Wikidata ID

Q18338493


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