Rimini was one of the great artistic centers in late medieval Italy. In the 13th and 14th centuries, painters drawing on the earlier Byzantine tradition elevated panel painting to a new, lyrical form. Gold-ground painting in the city found its culmination in Giovanni Francesco da Rimini, who was active in the middle of the 15th century.

Giovanni had a well-traveled career in Italy and spent his most significant period in Bologna from 1459 to 1470. Our Saint Jerome likely dates from this period and was almost certainly part of a pilaster of a polyptych, of which three additional pieces survive in private collections. Saint Jerome is depicted in his honorary guise as a cardinal, holding a quill in his hand above a book representing his celebrated Latin translation of the Bible. He is accompanied by a lion from whose paw Jerome had extracted a thorn, earning the lion’s lifelong devotion so charmingly expressed here. 

Our Saint Jerome is closely related to the figure of God the Father in Giovanni Francesco da Rimini’s tondo in the Brooklyn Museum, which shares the same inclined head and stylized features.

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