Picture Description

Artist:			     Albrecht Dürer
Artist Dates:	     1471-1528
Artist School:	     German School
Title:	       Saint Jerome in his Cell – Der heilige Hieronymus in der Zelle
Date of the block or plate that the artist created:	1511

Image Size:		      9 ¼ x 6 ¼ inches
Sight Size:		      same
Sheet Size:		      same
Mat size:		      16 7/8 x 13 7/8 inches
Framed:		      Unframed

Media: 	       Woodcut on laid paper.  
    Watermark is bull’s head with initials “jz” (Meder 70)

Edition Size:			Unknown, but approximately 200
Published date:		      1511
Published by:		      The artist
Signed by artist:		With his monogram at bottom center in the block
Signed by the printer: 	Printed by the artist

Exhibited:		   None

Provenance:	     John Barnard, London (Lugt 1419)
		           Richard Gutekunst, Berne (Lugt 2213a)
		           Garland-Smith & Co., London, 
         December 2f., 1920, Lot 91.
		           Richard Zinser, Forest Hills, New York (not in Lugt)
		           By descent in the family; consigned to
		           N.G. Stogdon, Catalogue 8: German and Netherlandish 
			    Woodcuts of the 15th and 16th Centuries, 1991, no. 35.
   Acquired by C.G. Boerner, New York, in 2007 directly from the
   heirs of Richard Zinser
   C.G. Boerner, New York, Neue Lagerliste 120: German Old 
   Master Prints, New York 2007, no. 46
		           Acquired Private Collection, Detroit
		           Dealer, New York, New York
		           Adamson-Duvannes Galleries, Downey, California (#19531)

click to request more information

Albrecht Durer (1471-1528)
German School

SAINT JEROME IN HIS CELL, 1511



	SAINT JEROME IN HIS CELL depicts the saint in a small well ordered room, seated at his desk with an open book.  The curtain has been drawn back to reveal this private space, with the devoted lion in the foreground, dozing in the manner of a domestic cat.  (Saint Jerome is often depicted with a lion, in reference to the popular belief that he had tamed a lion in the wilderness by healing its paw.)

	Albrecht Durer’s masterful woodcut technique is seen in the different surfaces of the room.  For the flat areas of walls and furniture he uses parallel hatching, enlivened with short, interspersed diagonals.  The saint’s mantle, the curtain and the round flasks on the shelf against the wall, are modeled with lines which curve to follow the shape of the underlying form.  The shaggy lion is rendered with a mass of wavy strokes.

	Saint Jerome was an early Christian scholar who lived in the 4th Century A.D.  He was a priest, theologian and historian, and best known for his translation of the bible from Greek and Roman into Latin.  Called the Vulgate, and known as the Bible of the common people, this work was in use until 1979.

Albrecht Durer was a master painter, printmaker and goldsmith as well as art theorist and humanist scholar, He embodied the idea of the Renaissance man, constantly seeking, learning and teaching.  He was, in fact, the artist who brought the Renaissance to Northern Europe.


Sold: Private Collection, Beverly Hills, California