The Dream of Saint Jerome

This painting and its companion, Saint Augustine’s Vision, depict scenes from the life of Saint Jerome, the scholar and hermit credited with translating the Bible into Latin from Hebrew so that more people could read it. The first painting shows Jerome’s dream of being punished by a heavenly council for preferring ancient Greek and Roman texts to the Christian Bible. In the second painting, Saint Augustine sits at his desk composing a eulogy for Jerome when he is interrupted by a vision of the scholar-saint accompanied by John the Baptist, who praises Jerome as his equal. Matteo di Giovanni hinted at this connection in The Dream of St. Jerome by including a scene of baptism in the archway above Jerome’s head. Such cross-references between artworks and texts are a hallmark of 15th-century Italian painting and served to engage the viewer in active, contemplative looking.