Saint Jerome

Bartolomeo Coriolano held a privileged position in Italian art: the celebrated artist Guido Reni (1575-1642) picked him to turn his drawings into prints, thereby spreading Reni's genius to a wider world. Coriolano specialized in chiaroscuro woodcut, a technique that employed multiple woodblocks to produce tonal images by printing overlapping colors. In skilled hands, such prints could take on sculptural qualities. Here the collaboration between Reni and Coriolano resulted in an imposing Jerome, whose physical presence-and hence his soul-is likened to the solid rocky outcropping on which he leans.