Around 1496 -1521 · desert, cell and work of the text

Dürer follows Saint Jerome between two opposing spaces: outside, the old man hits his chest in front of the crucifix; inside, the translator writes in a cabinet bathed in regular light.

Saint Jerome offers Albrecht Dürer a theme capable of bringing together the body, landscape, study and engraving. The artist represents him sometimes a penitent hermit, sometimes a scholar translating the Bible into Latin. In Saint Jerome the Penitent, around 1496 -1497, the half-naked saint kneels in a rocky landscape inspired by the quarries around Nuremberg. He holds the stone with which he hits his chest; a small crucifix, the lion and the path to a church build an ascetic route. In 1514, Saint Jerome in his office belongs to the three Meisterstiches: the halo of the saint and the sun entering through the windows are balanced, while the lion and the dog sleep in the foreground. Between these poles, the other active variants shift the decor and the relationship to attributes. The repetition of the subject thus becomes a comparison between inner agitation and intellectual order. The selection "Saint Jerome by Albrecht Dürer" notably compares Saint Jerome the penitent and Saint Jerome. His reading favors details.

The desert and the cabinet do not oppose each other as an error and a solution: they show two complementary disciplines, one of the body and the other of the text.