Saint Jerome in the Wilderness ca. 1470 Probably by Antonio Rossellino Italian The Metropolitan displays in its galleries an important group of quattrocento reliefs of the Madonna and Child by such Italian Renaissance masters as Antonio Rossellino (see acc. no. ) and Benedetto da Maiano (see acc. no. ). Until Saint Jerome in the Wilderness entered the collection, however, the Museum had no example of a classic narrative relief. Beginning in 1424, when Lorenzo Ghiberti’s first set of bronze doors for the Baptistery was set in place, narrative reliefs held signal importance in

Saint Jerome in the Wilderness ca. 1470 Probably by Antonio Rossellino Italian The Metropolitan displays in its galleries an important group of quattrocento reliefs of the Madonna and Child by such Italian Renaissance masters as Antonio Rossellino (see acc. no. ) and Benedetto da Maiano (see acc. no. ). Until Saint Jerome in the Wilderness entered the collection, however, the Museum had no example of a classic narrative relief. Beginning in 1424, when Lorenzo Ghiberti’s first set of bronze doors for the Baptistery was set in place, narrative reliefs held signal importance in Florentine art. (It was Ghiberti who invented the device, echoed here, of showing the foreground spilling over the frame in the reliefs for his second set of Baptistery doors, the "Gates of Paradise.")[1] Small reliefs like this marble were often made for private devotions in a family chapel. The 1553 inventory of the Palazzo della Signoria, Florence, for example, mentions a low relief of Saint Jerome,[2] which could have been this one, although it is usually associated with a work by Desiderio da Settignano in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, [3] The subject is unsurprising: images of this gaunt ascetic abounded in the 1470s, as is attested by paintings attributed to Andrea del Verrocchio (Palazzo Pitti, Florence) and by Leonardo da Vinci (Pinacoteca, Vatican).Widely read during the Renaissance, Jerome’s letters vividly describe his physical and spiritual trials in the desert outside Bethlehem, where, he tells us, he would "set up my oratory, and make that spot a place of torture for my unhappy flesh."[ 4] Furthermore, the best-selling compilation of saints’ lives, Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend, relates charming stories of his relationships with animals, which are often woven into depictions of the present scene. We learn that he befriended a lion; the lion teamed up with a donkey to carry wood to Jerome’s monastery; and some camel-driving merc

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