St Jerome penitent in the wilderness, kneeling and holding a stone in his right hand, with the lion at his feet, and with a quarry in the background. c.1496 'Dürer made no fewer than six prints of St Jerome during the course of his career, including his first signed woodcut, 'St Jerome in his study' (cat. no. 29). His obsession with this particular saint is a reflection of the increasing veneration accorded to the four church fathers during the course of the fifteenth century. In contrast to his early woodcut of the saint, Dürer has here been inspired by his travels through the Alps and his watercolour studies of quarries and cliffs around Nuremberg, to create a rocky setting for an interpretation of St Jerome fasting in the desert. It also provided an opportunity for him to demonstrate his rapidly developing skill with the burin in the representation of various textures, from smooth sunlit rock-face and crumbling rocks to plants and leaves. The view of a Quarry formerly at Bremen (Strauss 1495/51) was used as the basis for the large cliff in the right background'. Bibliographic references Meder 1932 / Dürer Katalog (57) Bartsch / Le Peintre graveur (VII.77.61) Dodgson 1926 / Albrecht Dürer (11) Schoch 2001-04 / Albrecht Dürer, das druckgraphische Werk. 3 vols I Intaglio, II Woodcuts, III Book illustrations (I.6) (British Museum) This later heliogravure impression was made in 1914 in Munich.