Artwork · 16th century · Joachim Patinir

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The Penitence of Saint Jerome

Joachim Patinirca. 1515Oil on wood117.5 × 81.3 cm

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At a glance

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The center panel shows Saint Jerome kneeling beside a rock; the wings show the Baptism of Christ and Saint Anthony surrounded by demons.
Joachim Patinir, a painter in Antwerp, made this three-part altarpiece in oil on wood around 1515.
The saints are small and the world around them is huge. You can wander through it for a long time, spotting a castle, a camel, and a few swans.

Reading the picture

5 places to look closer

Tap a number on the painting to jump to its note, or a close-up to see that spot in the whole picture.

Zoom in on the old man in the center panel. This is Saint Jerome. His robe is pulled open to bare his chest, and a small crucifix leans in the ground in front of him. He is repenting in the wilderness, praying over his past wrongs.
Now look behind him to the right. Loaded camels and a donkey stand in a yard, and merchants kneel before a monk. A lion walks near the gate. This is a scene from Jerome's legend: his lion tracked down the monastery's stolen donkey in a merchants' caravan and drove the whole group back home.
Look up at the far landscape. There is a castle ringed by a moat with white swans on the water, and beyond it a city full of spires. Patinir painted the near ground brown and green and made everything bluer as it goes back, so the view seems to stretch on forever.
Zoom in on the top of the left wing. God the Father, wearing a crown, looks down through a gap in the clouds, and golden rays pour down from him. Below, at the riverbank, John the Baptist is baptizing Christ.
In the right wing, Saint Anthony in a black habit holds a red book and a string of prayer beads. Behind him crowd a bird-headed monster and figures carrying spears. The saint does not turn around. He simply raises one hand.

When it was painted

In 1515 a new name went into the books of the painters' guild in Antwerp: Joachim Patinir. He came from the Meuse valley, from the small town of Dinant or nearby Bouvignes, and nobody recorded the year he was born. This altarpiece belongs to those first years after he became a master.

Antwerp at the time was a port packed with ships and merchants from all over Europe, and there were plenty of buyers for pictures. Painters often worked together. Patinir was close to the well-known painter Quentin Massys, and the two even shared at least one panel, with Massys painting the figures and Patinir the landscape.

Around Dinant, steep rock cliffs line the river Meuse. Many scholars think the strange, towering rocks in Patinir's paintings grew out of the landscape he knew from home.

In 1520 the German artist Albrecht Dürer arrived in Antwerp and stayed for months. In his travel diary he called Patinir a good landscape painter. The next year Dürer went to Patinir's wedding as a guest, and he noted in the same diary that he had drawn Patinir's portrait.

Patinir did not have much time left. He died in Antwerp in 1524, and Massys became the guardian of his young daughters. Centuries later, in 1936, this altarpiece entered The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Look at the center panel once more. Right beside the kneeling Jerome, a pale rock shoots up like a pillar. Follow the crags over into the left wing, and you can see why Dürer remembered him as a landscape painter.

The painter

Joachim Patinir

1515–1524

All paintings by Joachim Patinir →

The Penitence of Saint Jerome

Questions to think about

Look for itCan you find one lion and two camels in the background of the center panel?
Why?Why do you think Patinir painted the saint so small and gave the landscape so much room?
What about you?Jerome has left other people behind to think about his own mistakes. Do those of us with busy lives also need quiet time alone to look back on ourselves?

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