Landscape with St Jerome

landscape

Patenier painted and signed his Landscape with St Jerome in about 1515. From a high vantage point, the eye is initially drawn to the foreground motifs, but then passes on stage by stage through an immense landscape, a spatial continuum that extends to the far horizon and narrow strip of sky. In the left foreground, in front of a soaring rock formation with a cavity that attracts the gaze, the saint is seated in front of a primitive shelter built up against the rock.

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About the Artist

Joachim Patenier

1480 – 1524

Netherlandish painter, a pioneer of landscape as an independent genre. Nothing is known of his early life, but in 1515 he became a member of the Antwerp Guild. In 1521 he met Dürer, who made a drawing of him and described him as a "good landscape painter". There are only a very few signed paintings, but a great many others have been attributed to him with varying degrees of probability. Patenier also painted landscape backgrounds for other artists and The Temptation of St Anthony (Prado, Madrid) was done in collaboration with his friend Quentin Massys (who after Patenier's death became guardian of his children). Although landscape never constitutes the subject of his pictures, Patenier was the first Netherlandish artist to let it dwarf his figures in religious and mythological scenes. His style combines naturalistic observation of detail with a marvellous sense of fantasy, forming a link between Bosch and Bruegel.

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