Saint Jerome in a Landscape

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

Domenico Campagnola helped to establish a specialized collector’s market for landscape drawings, building upon the legacy of his father, Giulio Campagnola, and Titian. Like Titian, Domenico’s works emphasize God’s power as expressed through the natural world. Hermit Saint Jerome, at lower left, sits in spiritual contemplation within a dynamic landscape rendered with Domenico’s distinctive linear style, complete with rustic houses, humble tree groves, and grand distant vistas. Independent drawings (drawings made as works of art in and of themselves) were a new category of drawing advanced by Domenico and others. Domenico Campagnola was one of the first artists in Renaissance Italy to create drawings such as this as ends in themselves rather than as preparatory studies.