1476
Matteo di Giovanni (Italian, c. 1430–1495)
Italy
This painting and its companion, The Dream of Saint Jerome, depict scenes from the life of Saint Jerome, the scholar credited with translating the Bible from Hebrew into Latin, a more widely known language at the time, so that more people would be able to read it. The first scene 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 is composing Jerome’s eulogy when he is interrupted by a vision of the saint accompanied by John the Baptist, who praises Jerome as his equal.
Tempera on panel