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Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Jose de Ribera ("el Españoleto")

Saint Jerome in penitence

1634
Oil on canvas.
126 x 78 cm
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Inv. no.
335
(
1981.33
)
Not on display
  • Level 2 Permanent Collection
  • Level 1 Permanent Collection
  • Level 0 Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
  • Level -1 Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Level 2
Permanent Collection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 16 17 18 22 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Recommended start of the visitClassical rooms
1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 14 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 15 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  
Level 1
Permanent Collection
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30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 Recovering the ligth. Restoration of Waterloo Bridge, by André Derain 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Postpop rooms 54 Postpop rooms 55 Postpop rooms 56 Postpop rooms Rodin Exhibition room
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Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
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Level -1
Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Temporary exhibition rooms Conference room EducaThyssen Workshop
Saint Jerome in penitence is one of the episodes from the life of a saint whom Ribera depicted on a number of occasions throughout his career, as with the theme of the Pietà. The life of Saint Jerome, one of the four Doctors of the Church, author of the Vulgate and secretary to Pope Damasus who commissioned him with the new Latin translation of the Bible, was disseminated through The Golden Legend by Jacopo de Voragine, along with the lives of numerous other saints and martyrs. The figure of Saint Jerome, along with that of other contemplative saints and female anchorites such as the Magdalen, was promoted during the Counter-Reformation, which saw these spiritual episodes as perfect examples of repentance and which also fulfilled the requirement of moving the spectator to piety.

One of Ribera’s earliest known depictions of Saint Jerome dates from 1616–17 and was painted for one of his patrons in Naples, Pedro Téllez Girón, Duke of Osuna. In that work, now in the collegiate church of Osuna, Seville, Saint Jerome is depicted in meditation holding a skull and lying on the ground in his cave listening to the trumpet of the Last Judgement played by an angel. Another canvas of 1626 in The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, depicts the same subject but with a different composition. In that work the saint, surrounded by his symbols including the lion, is interrupted in his labours by an angel with a musical instrument.

In the present canvas Saint Jerome does not have the landscape background seen in the Osuna version and seems to have paused in his meditations as he looks up. Despite the fact that it was executed in the 1630s at a time when Ribera’s palette lightened, it is painted with an intense tenebrism that recalls the style of Caravaggio. The saint’s body is partly covered by a deep red cloak, leaving some of his body exposed. This is painted with a precise brushstroke that reveals the wrinkles and bones that poke though his flaccid, leathery skin. His rough hands are painted in warmer tones than the rest of the skin, thus emphasising the presence of the skull that he holds up on the folds of his cloak. Ribera paid great attention to all the details in the composition and to the different textures of the materials, conveyed, for example, in the different rhythms of the brushstroke through which he captures Jerome’s hair, and the long and short strokes used for his white beard. This careful handling is also evident in the expressive, simple still life of two books resting on a stone at the lower left corner.

The present canvas entered the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection in 1981 from the New York art market. It had previously been in a private collection in Geneva and in another in France, whose owners had acquired it on the Paris art market.

Mar Borobia
17th Centurys. XVII - Pintura españolaPaintingOilcanvas
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Saint Jerome in penitence. San Jerónimo penitente, 1634
Saint Jerome in penitence
Jose de Ribera ("el Españoleto")

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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Saint Jerome in penitence. San Jerónimo penitente, 1634
Saint Jerome in penitence
Jose de Ribera ("el Españoleto")

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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