St. Jerome

The aged scholar-saint, gaunt and white-bearded, appears in a cardinal's red, one long hand resting on the open pages of his great translation of the Bible. El Greco gives Jerome the stretched proportions and grave, flickering intensity of all his sitters, the face carved by years of study and penance. Less the desert hermit than the towering Doctor of the Church, he embodies learning turned to devotion. El Greco painted several versions of this commanding type; this one is in the Frick, while others of his works are elsewhere in this collection.