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Lot Essay
This derives from the composition by van Cleve, of which an autograph version was sold in these Rooms, 3 December 1997, lot 46. The latter was based upon Drer's Saint Jerome, painted in 1521 for Ruy Fernández de Almeida, Ambassador of King John III of Portugal, and now in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon.
Saint Jerome, one of the Latin Fathers of the Church, moved to Bethlehem in 386 and there translated the Old and New Testaments into Latin (the Vulgate). The popularity of this subject is explained by Friedländer: 'On the eve of the Reformation, the learned, brooding searcher after God represented an appropriate ideal' (M.J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting, IXa, ed. H. Pauwels, Leyden, 1972, p. 31).
Saint Jerome, one of the Latin Fathers of the Church, moved to Bethlehem in 386 and there translated the Old and New Testaments into Latin (the Vulgate). The popularity of this subject is explained by Friedländer: 'On the eve of the Reformation, the learned, brooding searcher after God represented an appropriate ideal' (M.J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting, IXa, ed. H. Pauwels, Leyden, 1972, p. 31).