Jusepe de Ribera, Spanish, 1591 – 1652

Saint Jerome, 1640
Oil on canvas
Framed: 165 x 139.5 cm (64 15/16 x 54 15/16 inches)
Harvard Art Museum, Gift of Arthur Sachs
1920.7

On Saint Jerome
[Jerome] hastened to the desert; and . . . he tells what great ills he bore there for Christ. "For as long as I dwelt in the desert in that vast solitude, burnt with the heat of the sun, . . . I thought that I was in the midst of the delights of Rome. . . . I imagined that I was surrounded by dancing girls, and in my frozen body and moribund flesh the fires of concupiscence were lighted. For this I wept unceasingly, and subjugated the rebellious flesh with week-long fasts. . . . [A]nd angered and stern with myself I sought the desert wastes alone."

The Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine [c. 1260], ed. and trans. Ryan Granger and Helmut Ripperger (New York: Arno Press, 1969), 588-89.