St Jerome Penitent

This composition in grisaille is divided over two separate panels that had been joined at an unknown date. It formed the exterior wings of a triptych that had at its centre the Agony in the Garden (now in Berlin).

While earlier representations of St Jerome most often depicted him as a contemplative scholar in his study, in the latter half of the fifteenth century a new type emerged, that of the penitent Jerome in the wilderness. In the southern Netherlands, the new iconography appeared in Bruges, initially with Hans Memling’s image of St Jerome before a rocky landscape of about 1485-90 and flourished about 1510 and after in the workshops of Gerard David and Adriaen Isenbrant.

Gossart’s painting follows composition developed in these workshops: Jerome is kneeling at the right with his lion, facing the cross with the crucified Christ attached to a tree at the left, his cardinal’s hat is on the ground; the landscape is framed by rocky cliffs.