Spanish school; mid-17th century. "Penitent Saint Jerome". Oil on canvas. Measurements: 113 x 86 cm. In this work the painter offers us an image full of mystic emotion, very typical of the Spanish counter-reformist art. Thus, we see a work with a clear and concise composition, with the saint full-length in the foreground, highlighted by the direct, tenebrist lighting, on a background of dark tones, in whose right zone we can see, in the distance, a landscape. As was also common at this time in the Spanish school, Saint Jerome is depicted writing and meditating next to a human skull. In this case, however, it is worth noting that the saint is holding a stone in his hands while looking towards a point outside the composition. Alongside the saint, other iconographic attributes can be seen that define the figure of Saint Jerome, firstly, the lion that accompanied him since he took the thorn out of the silver, and also the scriptures that define him as the first translator of the Bible. One of the four great Doctors of the Latin Church, St Jerome was born near Aquileia (Italy) in 347. Trained in Rome, he was an accomplished rhetorician and polyglot. Baptised at the age of nineteen, between 375 and 378 he withdrew to the Syrian desert to lead an anchorite's life. He returned to Rome in 382 and became a collaborator of Pope Damasus. One of the most frequent representations of this saint is his penance in the desert. His attributes are the stone he uses to beat his chest and the skull on which he meditates. Also the cardinal's cape (or a red mantle), although he was never a cardinal, and the tamed lion. The latter comes from a story in the "Golden Legend", where it is narrated that one day, when he was explaining the Bible to the monks in his convent, he saw a lion limping towards him. He removed the thorn from its paw, and from then on kept it in his service, instructing it to look after his donkey while it grazed. Some merchants stole the donkey, and the lion recovered it, returning it to the saint without hurting the animal. Spanish Baroque painting is one of the most authentic and personal examples of art, because its conception and form of expression arose from the people and their deepest feelings. With the economy of the State in ruins, the nobility in decline and the high clergy heavily taxed, it was the monasteries, parishes and confraternities of clerics and laymen who promoted its development, with the works sometimes being financed by popular subscription. Sculpture was thus obliged to express the prevailing ideals in these environments, which were none other than religious ones, at a time when Counter-Reformation doctrine demanded a realistic language from art so that the faithful could understand and identify with what was represented, and an expression endowed with an intense emotional content in order to increase the fervour and devotion of the people. Religious themes were therefore the main subject matter of Spanish painting of this period, which in the early decades of the century focused on capturing the natural world and gradually intensified throughout the century on expressive values, which it achieved through movement and a variety of gestures, the use of light and the depiction of moods and feelings. Dimensions 113 x 86 cm.