Cleveland Museum of Art

Saint Jerome

Hendrick ter BrugghenLinkedCulture matchlcp-aa590f750974

Date: c. 1621
Medium: oil on canvas
Culture: Flanders
Department: European Painting and Sculpture
Institution: Cleveland Museum of Art
Object ID: 149074

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

Not all subjects are easy to identify. This museum long thought that the subject was the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, largely because tears are part of the standard representation of this ancient thinker. However, ter Brugghen omits the other crucial key to identifying Heraclitus--a globe over which he weeps. Instead, the book and skull indicate that the figure is Saint Jerome, known for translating the Bible into Latin. The artist probably chose to show Jerome crying to intensify his penitence.

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Provenance & credit

As published by the source institution. Coverage varies — not every institution's open-data feed includes ownership history.

Credit line: Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund
Provenance: Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn (Wynnstay, Denbighshire, Wales) (sold, Wyngetts Auction Galleries, Wrexem, Wales, May 12, 1971, lot 489, as "Anonymous: Man Reading with Human Skull at Side," to Trafalgar Galleries). | Trafalgar Galleries (London, England), sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art, 1977.