Saint Jerome

Francesco di Giorgio Martini of Siena, skilled in painting, drawing, architecture, writing, and sculpture, exemplified the multitalented "Renaissance man." Here he brings out the pictorial possibilities of bronze. Under a bare tree, amid ruins from the ancient Roman culture that Jerome had loved, the penitent saint is rendered in high relief, but his far arm seems to fade into the delicately manipulated background. The saint's traditional companion, the lion (from whose paw he had removed a thorn) drinks from a stream that winds toward a monastery on a distant hill. Tiny birds, a snake, a lizard, a tortoise, and a scorpion — each symbolizing an aspect of Jerome's experience — inhabit the flickering landscape.