Saint Jerome Reading
Giovanni Bellini
1505
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 "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.
National Gallery of Art, Washington · Image: CC0 · Text: Wikipedia (adapted), CC BY-SA 4.0