St Jerome in His Study

This panel was intended for devotional use in a home or a monastic institution. The subject of St Jerome in his study was an autonomous one in the mid-fifteenth century in Flemish art. In accordance with Flemish practice, Antonio da Fabriano painted his name “antonio de fabr[ian]o” on a fictive cartellino on the bottom of the frame, which is original.

Antonio makes the domestic description of Jerome’s study humbler and more real through such details as the veining and knots in the wood, the cardinal’s hat hanging from a nail, and the small crucifix affixed to the keystone of a brick archway. There is a still-life of books randomly scattered on shelves together with a candlestick and an hourglass. Antonio’s Flemish tendencies could be the result of a journey to Naples or Genoa in the 1440s,