Saint Jerome Reading
About the painting
Saint Jerome in the Desert is an oil painting on canvas of 1505 by the Italian Renaissance master Giovanni Bellini, now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Little remains of the signature on the first rock in the left foreground, but it has been confirmed as genuine during restoration and can be reconstructed as "[Johannes Bellinu]s. 1505". This is problematic, since the work's general style is linked to fashions no later than 1490, whereas Bellini's style of figures and landscapes had already begun to be influenced by Giorgione by 1500, with the backgrounds more fused and unified in terms of atmosphere. The composition makes it more analogous to his earlier works, such as the Saint Jerome in the Desert of c. 1480 in the Uffizi. The Washington work may have been a collaboration, a work completed by a pupil in Bellini's studio, or left incomplete and only finished by Bellini himself much later.
Read on
Saint Jerome is shown reading in the desert, referring to his life as a hermit and as the author of the Vulgate Bible. A lizard, a squirrel and hare appear among the rocks, while in the distance are a ruined Roman bridge and series of arches along with a walled city. In the center background is another city on an island or peninsula in the sea. The fig tree, bare tree and crumbled rocks are all theological symbols. The upper left part of the ruins and other more stiffly painted parts of the background were probably produced by Bellini's studio.
Meanwhile, in the life of Giovanni Bellini
The whole life1501–1505
Isabella Gonzaga and commissions without paintings
In 1501–04 the Marchioness of Mantua, Isabella Gonzaga (also known as Isabella d'Este), has great difficulty obtaining from Bellini a painting of the Madonna and Saints, for which she has already paid in advance (it is now lost). In 1505 she tries through Pietro Bembo to commission another, of secular or mythological content; its subject and fate are unknown.
1506
Meeting Dürer in Venice
On Albrecht Dürer's second visit to Venice he calls Bellini very old but still the best in painting, and full of courtesy toward foreign fellow painters. In a letter to Pirckheimer Dürer reports that Bellini praised him before many gentlemen and came himself to ask for a work, promising to pay well.
1507
The death of his brother Gentile
After Gentile's death Giovanni inherits their father Jacopo's sketchbook, on condition that he finish a picture his brother left incomplete. Marin Sanudo notes that Gentile's brother Zuan Belin remains, the most excellent painter in Italy.
