Saint Jerome
Guido Reni
1630–1635
- Medium
- Etching and engraving in black on ivory laid paper
- Dimensions
- Plate: 21.6 × 13.9 cm (8 9/16 × 5 1/2 in.); Sheet: 22.7 × 15 cm (8 15/16 × 5 15/16 in.)
- Genre
- etching
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago
Tags
engraving (printing process)printingprintprints and drawingetchingpaper (fiber product)
About
While he did produce a small number of etchings himself, Guido Reni nonetheless appreciated the possibilities offered by circulating his works via prints made in collaboration with other artists. Here Jerome appears more pensive and scholarly than in the nearby woodcut (1955.1070), made after a different Reni drawing, which shows him striking himself in the chest with a rock. While only Coriolano included an explicit halo, elegantly inscribed with the tan color block, both sheets movingly depict an impassioned saint striving for spiritual perfection in the wilderness.
