Saint Jerome

Blanchard treated the theme of Saint Jerome on several occasions: see, for example, the picture signed and dated 1632 in the National Museum, Budapest; that formerly in the Museum at Bar-le-Duc; and the presumably slightly earlier Saint Jerome now in the musée de Grenoble (see J. Thuillier, catalogue of the exhibition, Jacques Blanchard 1600-1638, musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes, 1998, p. 180, no. 53, p. 210, no. 66, and p. 112, no. 18). The present picture, with its fluid handling of the beard and powerful rendering of the Saint's ageing hands, comes closest to the Grenoble picture, also more Caraveggesque in tone than the other two, and akin to the work of Blanchard's contemporary in Paris at that time, Claude Vignon.