St Jerome in Meditation, after Michelangelo

Author: Surya Stemerding

St Jerome is pictured meditating in the wilderness, accompanied by the lion, his constant companion since he removed a thorn from the animal’s paw. The cardinal’s hat on the ground is a reference to Jerome’s later position in the church. The two books depict the Vulgate, his translation of the Bible from the Hebrew sources into everyday Latin. 

Marcello Venusti probably made this drawing after a design by Michelangelo (1475-1564) that has not survived. There are obvious similarities between the seated figure and his sculpture of Moses in San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome. The motif of the hand grasping the chin to support the head can also be seen in the fresco with the prophet Jeremiah on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

The figure of the saint in the Rotterdam drawing is likewise known from a rare print by Sebastiano da Reggio (Sebastiano di Re, active c.1557-1563) of 1557, where Michelangelo is recorded as ‘inventor’ and Marcello Venusti as ‘pictor’.^[1] There is also a 1575 engraving by Cherubino Alberti (1553-1615) in which the same saint is placed in a landscape.^[2] That print was probably made to Michelangelo’s design; it shows the saint in reverse and only Michelangelo is credited as inventor. A similar combination occurs in an anonymous Flemish engraving, but the landscape is different.^[3] Taking one of the prints as the basis, Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) also used the motif of the saint deep in thought for his St Jerome (1609-10) in Potsdam (Sanssouci).^[4]

De Tolnay (1960) and Joannides (2007) suggested the drawing in Rotterdam was a preliminary study for a lost altarpiece by Marcello Venusti in the Mignanelli Chapel in Santa Maria della Pace in Rome.^[5] However, it has since become clear that the altarpiece was a Virgin and Child, flanked by Saints Jerome and Ubaldus, and thus has nothing to do with the drawing.^[6]

Firpo (2008) convincingly associated the drawing with a small painting on copper sold at auction in 2005 that he attributed to Venusti.^[7] The landscape in the background – no longer visible in the drawing in Rotterdam because the sheet has been cropped around the figure of the saint – is worked out differently on the little copper panel from the way it appears in Da Reggio’s print. The painting differs in a few small details from both the drawing and the print. The crucifix is positioned such that it points directly towards the skull on a shelf above right, and the traditional penitent’s rock, for self-chastisement, is prominent. In the drawing, by contrast, this rock is only roughly drawn and forms the top of an ichthus symbol. The small painting on copper is of mediocre quality, which suggests that it is a copy.^[8]

it is possible that the Rotterdam drawing may have been in the collection of Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy, in the seventeenth century. A drawing of a ‘St Jerome’, in a black frame, is listed as ‘probably by Michelangelo’ in the inventory drawn up after his death (1630). This could be a reference to the Rotterdam drawing.^[9] Venusti’s many copies after Michelangelo were often confused with autograph drawings as early as the sixteenth century, and in this case the description in the inventory is already circumspect.