Albrecht Dürer's St. Jerome in His Study: A Philological Reference

* I would like to express my gratitude to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation for having supported my research at the Warburg Institute, London.

Abstract

Albrecht Dürer's masterly engraving of St. Jerome in His Study (Fig. 1), dated 1514, evokes an ideal of contemplative solitude which bore a special appeal for humanists of the Renaissance. The venerable church father is bent in concentration in the warm serenity of his study, accompanied by a lion, his legendary companion. His monastic cell, fully appointed with the attributes of a scholarly life, is cast in a rigidly constructed mathematical perspective which conveys an image of exacting intellectual and spiritual discipline.¹ Here nothing appears to be out of place, with the exception of a single detail which, despite its insistent obtrusiveness, has gone almost without mention in analyses of the print.