Pietro Paolini (1603 -1681), Saint Jerome in the Study

98 x 72 cm
Oil on canvas

The canvas represents Saint Jerome in his study, with glasses on his nose, reading a book. It is a canvas with an intense naturalism that has strong references to Caravaggio. This canvas is perfectly inserted in the catalog of Pietro Paolini, a wonderful painter from Lucca who is strongly attracted by the first generation of Merisi's followers; in particular, Bartolomeo Manfredi and Valentin de Boulogne. The canvas is one of the most interesting compositions of his maturity, painted in the fourth decade of the seventeenth century. The biblical scene is shown theatrically in the present painting in a strong light-dark contrast with bright red, white and dark brown-grey. Meditating and reading with his skull as a memento mori close at hand, he spends his days in absolute solitude. His red cardinal's hat hanging on a stump on the right and his red robe, which is loosely wrapped around his shoulder and enveloping his body, refer to his time as a cardinal. The dynamic, and at the same time soft material treatment of the composition as a night piece, is reminiscent of other individual figures of old men (as in works of Honthort). However, the more dramatic conception and the stronger light contrast, which is decreasing the Neapolitan influences, move the Hieronymus painting into the immediate vicinity of Matthias Stomer and Pietro Paolini.