The image of St. Jerome in the art of Titian. Problems of the study of iconography and the creative method of the artist.

Marchenko Nadezda Aleksandrovna ORCID: 0009-0007-2346-8190 Postgraduate student, Department of Semiotics and Theory of Art, Moscow State Lomonosov-University 125009, Russia, Moscow region, Moscow, Bolshaya Nikitskaya str., 3, building 1 182421mmm@gmail.com

Modern art historians have at their disposal various methods of studying Italian Renaissance painting. One of them is to study the historical evolution of a single plot or image that was widely used in the art of that era. Tracing the trajectory of his development from the early stage to the very last stage somewhere at the end of the Late Renaissance, we get not only a clear diagram of the gradual formation of iconographic schemes and figurative motifs. In this process, the change in the spiritual interests of that time was clearly imprinted, which manifested themselves in the gradual change of different points of view on the pictorial interpretation of a single plot motif. As time passes, he absorbs new ideas and ideas that characterize the intellectual life of the Renaissance, absorbs his views on different aspects of human existence. The key to the effectiveness of using such a research methodology is the constant presence of such subjects in Renaissance art, which signals the social relevance of the ideological issues associated with them.

The above also seems to be true with regard to its application within the narrower boundaries of an art school (for example, Roman, Florentine, Venetian) or even the work of one artist. There are many examples where the effective use of this approach has yielded important scientific results. If we turn to the classics of art studies of the last century, it makes sense to mention at least one work, namely, Erwin Panofsky's monograph "The Study of Titian's work, mainly iconography", published posthumously in 1969 ^{[1, 1-208]}. The successful application of the method of iconographic analysis, without which such a study of the "life of plots" turns out to be simply unthinkable, was combined here with an arsenal of scientific techniques typical of an iconologist. Combining both research positions proved to be extremely productive in this case, as it made it possible not only to trace the evolution of a number of subjects in the work of one artist, but also to explain the reasons that led to it.

At the same time, a careful reading of Panofsky's book, which has long become a bibliographic rarity, allows us to conclude that the study of the work of the Venetian artist from such a research position cannot yet be considered complete. It is still fraught with many mysteries for the art historian, who seeks to clarify the deepest substantive issues related to the works of the greatest master of the art school of Venice of the Renaissance. Of particular interest in this sense is the fact that Titian's creative activity lasted almost seventy years, during which his approach to solving the same pictorial tasks radically changed. Realizing this, we undertook a number of experiments to study the substantive basis of his works, based on the same subjects, but related to different periods of activity ^{[2, pp. 114-145; 3, pp. 134-155]}. By comparing them with each other, we were able to visually show how the artist's creative method changed, how his thinking evolved when he looked at the same subject, but from different angles, each time discovering something new in it, hitherto unknown.

In this regard, it is of particular interest that this approach turns out to be interrelated for the concepts that are key to studying the works of any master of Renaissance art, namely: "iconography" and "creative method". Combining research positions focused on the study of pictorial typologies and the reasons they were brought to light, and what result they eventually brought, seems to us very fruitful. It can bring rich results, especially if we are talking about a "cross-cutting" plot, that is, one that runs through the entire history of the development of the Venetian school in the form of a red thread. Its appearance at different stages of historical evolution indicates a connection with its basic aesthetic attitudes, which, in turn, were formed under the broad influence of the Renaissance spiritual culture in Venice. One of the most sought-after subjects on the local soil is the image of St. Jerome, whose figure was not missed by any major Venetian artist of the XV – XVI centuries. Titian was no exception in this series, as he turned to showing the Christian saint in his paintings and drawings at least six times, over the years, at the beginning, at the peak and at the very end of his career. Therefore, our task is to trace the artistic forms in which the evolution of the image of St. Jerome by Titian was clothed, and what reasons led to the choice of iconographic editing in each individual case. However, before proceeding to its resolution, we need to briefly familiarize ourselves with what iconographic distortions of the image of Jerome existed in Renaissance art, and under the influence of what factors of spiritual life they were formed.

The image of Saint Jerome (347-419/420), an outstanding theologian and author of numerous scientific works, became extremely widespread in Renaissance art, and on both sides of the Alps ^{[4, pp. 189-211]}. His popularity was particularly enhanced by the fact that he was not only an outstanding figure of the Christian Church, a papal adviser and a cardinal, but also gained fame as a translator of the Bible into Latin. This circumstance made him the patron of all educated people. First of all, these included those who were involved in intellectual pursuits, that is, Italian humanists and Dutch theologians. Along with them, it is also possible to name people of intellectual labor, for example, professionally engaged in trade or related to government. In this regard, it will suffice to mention that the image of St. Jerome, made by van Eyck himself, decorated the private chambers of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Currently, this work is associated with the painting of the school of the great Dutchman, which is in the museum collection of Detroit ^{[5, pp. 10-37]}. In our opinion, we are talking about a repetition of the lost van Eyck original (the painting is dated 1442, that is, it was painted a year after Jan's death), although there is also a research hypothesis that the painting from Detroit was started by Jan van Eyck, and after his death was completed by one of his students.

The naming of Petrus Christus as a possible co-author in this regard belongs to the category of pure assumptions, unsupported by any factual information. However, the painting from Detroit is of considerable interest to us now because of its innovative iconographic solution, which greatly distinguishes it from the principle of showing St. Jerome adopted at that time. Then, in the first half of the century, the iconographic version of the image of Jerome in the desert in the form of a penitent sinner became widespread among Italian and Dutch artists. Inheriting the Middle Ages, the painters of the Early Renaissance in Italy and the Dutch masters of the first half of the XV century sometimes showed him in the desert as a penitent, suffering, beating himself with a stone in the chest. With this approach, the saint's appearance is reminiscent of another hermit, John the Baptist. Like him, Jerome is sometimes shown half-naked, in pathetic rags. Its attributes, on the contrary, recall the iconography of the holy hermit Mary Magdalene. A skull is usually depicted next to it, and a crucifix is shown next to it. In particular, we find this kind of torture in Filippo Lippi, who executed his "Saint Jerome" somewhere at the very end of the 1430s, and, curiously, commissioned by Piero de' Medici, father of Lorenzo the Magnificent (Altenburg, Lindenau State Museum). Iconographically similar images of that era can be found in Dutch painting, in particular, among the followers of Rogier van der Weyden ^{[6, p. 246]}.

However, in comparison with them, the picture from Detroit with particular clarity reveals an innovative character in the interpretation of a traditional theme. Jerome is shown in it not in the middle of the desert in the image of a penitent sinner, but in the cozy atmosphere of an academic office, which makes his status as patron of educated people much more visible than in the versions with a landscape background. Further, an analysis of the work from the van Eyck circle allows us to draw important conclusions about the artistic forms in which the veneration of Jerome was clothed in the intellectual circles of the Renaissance. First of all, it is clear that we are talking about cabinet paintings in camera format, which ideally corresponded to the size of a private study, studiolo. Such rooms usually consisted of a small room, usually located behind the bedroom, that is, located far from the formal interiors, where guests were received and noisy feasts took place ^{[7, pp. 296-309]}. Unlike the large rooms designed for receptions, the office's furnishings were characterized by a wide variety of tastes of its owner, his favorite objects, books and artifacts were located there. The small size of the paintings perfectly corresponded to the chamber character of the room (in the case of the Detroit painting, they are 20.6 x 13.3 cm), which established a special, "confidential" nature of the aesthetic dialogue between the painting and the customer, who saw Jerome as his patron. He could take a painting in his hands, bring it close to his eyes, peering at the image with the same attention with which Jerome himself in van Eyck looks at a book leaf. Secondly, and much more importantly, such paintings clearly capture a certain iconographic version of the interpretation of the theme, which ideally corresponded to the purpose of the office as a place of intellectual work. If the image of the penitent Jerome was suitable for a domestic prayer service, then the saint at the desk served as a kind of alter ego of the customer, representing the ideal image of a man of intellectual labor.

A good example is Antonello da Messina's painting "Saint Jerome in a Cell" from the London National Gallery (dated around 1474). Its origin could be attributed to the painting of the same name by the school of Jan van Eyck in 1442 or, more likely, some other iconographically close work that has not reached us. It is very likely that Antonello could have seen the Van Eyck pattern in Naples, where he worked as a student of the local painter Colantonio in the early 1450s. A painting by a Neapolitan on the same subject has been preserved, marked by the obvious influence of the style of Jan van Eyck, whose "Hieronymus" (or rather, one of his versions) was at that time in the largest city of Southern Italy in the collection of King Alfonso of Aragon. Colantonio's Dutch influence is clearly visible both in his painting style, which focuses on reproducing the world of "infinitesimal quantities", similar to van Eyck's style, and in his iconographic solution. His Hieronymus sits in an armchair placed in the center of the study, the space of which is overflowing with the attributes of academic pursuits, primarily books, as well as writing instruments and other everyday details like an hourglass.

There are even more of them in the painting by his Sicilian pupil, who, in fact, re-established the Van Eyck tradition in Venice about half a century after the great Dutchman could personally appear in the city in the lagoon in the second half of the 1420s. In this sense, it is no coincidence that later, in the first third of the 16th century, a painting by Antonello was revered in Venice for the work of Jan himself. This is evidenced by the famous notes by Marcantonio Michiel, who, reviewing various judgments about authorship, attributed it, however, not without hesitation, to the circle of works by the master from Bruges ^{[8, p. 98]}. But now it is important for us to note something else. After moving to Venetian soil in the 70s of the XV century, the plot that interested us, or rather, its iconographic version, which developed in the first half of the century in Bruges in the circle of van Eyck and then received a second life in Southern Italy, has noticeably changed. The innovations are already clearly visible in the works of local artists who, like Giovanni Bellini, were in active contact with Antonello at one time, but later gave his own interpretation of the innovations that the Sicilian brought to the Venetian land.

The essence of the change was that the Dutch "learned" version was established in Venice not in its original form of a scene in an office, but rather in the form of a new, special edition, in which, while retaining meaningful meaning, it was enriched with new shades of meaning. Having absorbed a number of elements of an earlier iconographic image, which represented repentance in the desert, she formed a curious combination with it, developing the theme of learned hermitage in the desert. We are talking here about a process that iconologists call "contamination", and the essence of which is the emergence of a new iconographic scheme as a result of combining existing, similar, but not identical versions of a single plot. At the same time, it should be noted that certain grounds for such a radical transformation were initially present on Venetian soil, due to some important features of social and spiritual life in the Clearest Republic. They are quite well known, so we will limit ourselves to briefly mentioning some of them.

The Venetians' views on nature and rural life were based on an ideal of high moral value, which, in turn, was based on ideas that had developed in ancient Rome. It was developed in the concept of contemplative leisure as a means of achieving spiritual harmony, characteristic of the humanistic philosophy of the late Quattrocento. For Venetians, this was especially relevant, given the specific features of urbanism that they had to deal with in everyday life in a city with a limited area. However, there was a way out of the situation, which appeared at the beginning of the XV century after the fighting against the Duchy of Milan brought vast territories of Terra Farms under the rule of Venice. Later, after the conclusion of peace in 1454 ("the peace of Lodi") Venice received at its disposal the lands of Lombardy with the cities of Brescia, Cremona and others, and most importantly– with extensive agricultural land. Their importance to the social life and economy of the city increased dramatically after maritime trade, the traditional pillar of Venetian economic power, was seriously undermined by the growth of Turkish expansion in the Mediterranean.

At the same time, the spread of humanistic ideals of rural life stimulated the beginning of the process of developing rural areas and erecting private dwellings there, which formed the basis for the subsequent development of the tradition of building country villas, which clearly emerged in the second half of the XV century, but reached full maturity in the following century. Then, at the very beginning of the 1500s, a new, deeply original iconographic version of the display of St. Jerome among the landscape was formed in Venetian art, influenced by the same factors of social and cultural life that inspired Giorgione and the artists of his circle at that time. Enough has already been said about them in the scientific literature, where much is said about the special cult of nature and rural life, under the influence of which such a phenomenon as the Venetian pastoral arose ^{[9, pp. 21-81]}. During the difficult years of the turn of the century, filled with the events of the grueling war with the Cambrai League and the disastrous consequences they caused for the city, the ideal of scholarly hermitdom as the main condition for achieving peace became extremely popular and relevant. He responded well to the typical Venetian cultural views of nature as an ideal place for intellectual activity and philosophical reflection.

It is important for us now to note the influence such a factor had on the new type of composition in the iconography of St. Jerome. The main thing was that both of her versions, the "cabinet version" and the one that showed the saint as a penitent sinner, combined in an amazing way, forming a new figurative and meaningful whole. They became the image of Hieronymus in the landscape as a hermit, but intently thinking about something, as if in a study among books and manuscripts. Conversely, if the saint is placed in the study, then the signs of rural life in the form of images of the landscape outside the window or animals abundantly penetrate into the interior space ("Saint Jerome", Vincenzo Catena, circa 1510, London, National Gallery).

The group of paintings showing Hieronymus as a hermit in the desert is based on several late works by Giovanni Bellini from the collections of Florence, London and Washington, although even earlier, in the second half of the eighties of the XV century, the artist painted an unsaved altarpiece for the Venetian church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli ^{[10, pp. 1-48]}. An important element of iconography is the image of a fortified medieval city, symbolizing the Heavenly Jerusalem. The way there begins from the hermit's cave, which serves as a place of salvation for the soul. The next generation of artists, many of whom were Giovanni's students, are noticeably changing the nature of the landscape. It becomes less extensive than before, usually reducing to the image of a small corner somewhere in the foothills or on the edge of the forest. Such a chamber format of the landscape image ideally corresponded to the idea that nature serves as a suitable place to put into practice the concept of "scientific hermitage" ^{[11, pp. 111-115]}. These are paintings by Giovanni Mansueti ("Jerome" from the Academy of Carrara, about 1515-1520), Bartolomeo Montagni (1500-1502, Milan, Pinacoteca Brera; 1503-1504, Bergamo, Academy of Carrara), Cima da Conegliano ("Jerome in the desert" from the Brera of the early 1490s). The next step in the planned direction was taken by the artists of the Giorgione circle. Their panoramic coverage of the space is finally disappearing. We see images of modest suburban buildings, small dwellings and villas, as in an engraving by Giulio Campagnola (circa 1500). It is also important to note that here the plot is almost completely cleansed of religious motives, presenting in a visible form the classical, rather than the Christian ideal of philosophical leisure.

As for Titian, he apparently first turned to this topic in the middle of the second decade of the century, when he executed a drawing reproduced in woodcut by Hugo da Carpi in 1516. It makes a striking impression, because there is absolutely nothing to remind you of the "philosophical" version of the interpretation of the image of the saint, which has existed on Venetian soil for about forty years, since the time of Antonello. The artist shows the saint in a state of ecstasy, with a stone in his hand, with which he strikes himself. The stylistics of the image are characterized by increased expressiveness due to sharp black-and-white contrasts and energetically drawn lines, additionally emphasized through the use of woodcut techniques. Even more interesting is that Titian depicted the figure of the saint in a sharp spatial reversal, with tense muscles. In our opinion, the source of the plastic idea is nothing more than the famous statue of Laocoon, which had been well known to Renaissance artists for about ten years after it was found in Rome in January 1506 during excavation work. The resemblance to the classical original is indicated by the position of the saint's hands and, in particular, the legs of Titian, as well as the sharp, convulsive turn of the torso and the raised head, the movement of which is emphasized by a gaze directed at the sky.

It is well known how much interest the antique sculptural group aroused in Titian, who repeatedly repeated its motifs in his paintings to depict Christ or saints as "formulas of pathos", to use the definition adopted among iconologists ^{[12, p. 35-62]}. However, it is noteworthy that the references in the scientific literature refer to works made in the 1520s or even later (As an example, let's mention the "Crowning with a Crown of Thorns" from the early 1540s from the Louvre). In this case, our observation allows us to attribute the origin of Titian's interest in the antique original about a decade earlier, to the time around 1516, that is, to the moment of his career when there was a sharp turn in it. Abandoning the manner of the "Giorgione school" and its chamber themes, Titian began to work in the "grand style", which showed the influence of modern Roman art of the High Renaissance, primarily the works of Raphael and Michelangelo. Now we have the right to add to them the "Laocoon", with which Titian was able to significantly enhance the plastic expressiveness of the image of the Christian saint in the engraving of 1516.

In this sense, another invention of Titian looks understandable, who focused all the audience's attention on the figure of Hieronymus, almost without including the image of the landscape in the woodcut space. Here we can see, perhaps, the most noticeable symptom of a departure from the former, "Giorgione" pictorial manner, which the artist adhered to for a long time since the end of the 1500s, when he was trained in the Giorgione workshop. If in the first half of the 1510s he almost necessarily introduced natural motifs as a background in his works, now he refuses to do so, keen on developing new pictorial issues.

This observation allows us to draw a preliminary conclusion that when choosing an iconographic interpretation for a particular religious subject, Titian (at least during this period of his activity) was primarily guided by considerations of an artistic order, leaving aside, as in this case, questions of semantic meaning. It seems that the transmission of the spiritual meaning of the act of repentance occupies him much less than the search for a special plastic expressiveness in the image of the human figure. Apparently, the situation was similar with the following work based on this subject, a large-scale (38x53 cm) woodcut "Saint Jerome in the Desert" (about 1525-1530), which, in turn, is part of a series of works made in this technique at the end of the third decade of the century ^{[13, p. 138-170]}. It is unusual both in its spatial and compositional solution and in its interpretation of the content. It is easy to see that Titian is again referring to the old version of showing the saint in the desert, where he indulges in ecstatic repentance. There are no attributes of scientific pursuits, and therefore there is nothing to remind us that we have before us the image of an outstanding scientist-theologian, patron of the Italian humanists. However, the artist's ingenious compositional inversion made it possible to soften the ecstatic notes clearly discernible, for example, in Lorenzo Lotto, who tended towards a dramatic version of the saint's display. In Titian, his figure is relegated far into the background, where it seems even smaller due to the comparison with the huge rock mass at the foot of which Jerome repents. This technique opened up the opportunity to populate the foreground with images of wild animals, partly reminiscent of the tradition of animalism in the art of the North, and most importantly, to reveal to the viewer a grandiose panorama of the pre–Alpine landscape, representing a significant step forward in comparison with the modest rural idylls of Giorgione's time. The feeling of the mysterious spontaneous life of nature, spread everywhere, is largely achieved thanks to the energetic linear pattern. With the help of dynamic and flexible lines, the artist outlines the contours of rocks and objects, conveys the shapes of animal bodies, and builds the relief of the earth's surface. The energetic movements of the chisel recreated the manner of drawing typical of Titian in the 1520s, as well as the interpretation of natural forms, which at that time was extremely energetic, as evidenced by repetitions and copies of the famous "Murder of Peter the Martyr" with its unforgettable landscape background.

This leads to the conclusion that at this point in his creative career, the artistic method of Titian the draughtsman approaches to the utmost extent with the method of painting, which he used when writing his main works, primarily altarpieces, which brought him considerable fame in Venice and beyond. In this sense, one can see in the appeal to printed graphics the development of efforts to gain popularity, since graphic sheets could significantly strengthen it by spreading Titian's artistic inventions far beyond the borders of Venice. Other things are also clearly visible. With this method of showing the saint, whose image looks almost indistinguishable in the background of space, the significance of individual iconographic motifs is minimized, since this is essentially the kneeling figure of Jerome with his arms raised, which clearly indicates the nature of what is happening. The main thing with this approach is the image of a panoramic landscape that takes the eye far into the depths of the illusory space of the engraving.

At the same time or a little later, at the very beginning of the 1530s, the first known pictorial version of the plot with Jerome appeared, made by Titian, apparently for the Duke of Mantua, Federigo Gonzaga. Its spatial scenario seems to be much more limited in comparison with woodcuts, since there are now much fewer motifs of rural life in the frame than before. However, something else seems to be more significant. Unlike both woodcuts, Titian now shows his character in the night light. Everything is shrouded in darkness, hiding both the rocky landscape and the faithful lion, hiding in the shadow of a tree trunk, which covers the moon's disk. Its wavering ray falls on a Crucifix protruding from the darkness due to the glare on the surface.

Once again, considerations from the field of religious piety had to take a back seat to interests related exclusively to the field of art. It seems to us that in choosing the visual format of the nocturne, when everything takes place under ghostly moonlight, Titian proceeded from the idea of his teacher Giorgione, whose influence suddenly began to increase dramatically in his own art in the early 1530s. Then, one by one, picturesque idylls begin to appear, executed in the spirit of the art of the beginning of the century ("Madonna with a Rabbit" from the Louvre, circa 1530, and others). A little later, new versions of other pictorial types that once formed in the surroundings of the master from Castelfranco were executed, first of all, the so–called portrait of the "beauty" and the image of a reclining naked female figure (meaning paintings known as La bella and "Venus Urbinsky"). According to the notes of Marcantonio Michiel, who left a detailed description of the composition of a number of Venetian art collections, in the collection of Andrea Odoni there was in 1532 a copy of Giorgione's painting "naked Saint Jerome sitting in the desert, in the light of the moon" ^{[8, p. 86]}. This work was probably written under the influence of the art of the Northern Renaissance, which, in the case of Giorgione, was quite strong, affecting different areas of his work. However, another source of influence is clearly discernible in Titian, which turned out to be the tradition of Central Italian art, primarily Michelangelo. This is evidenced by the image of the saint's powerful musculature and the energetic spatial rotation of his body around its axis, activating the plastic expressiveness of naked forms. The energetic contrapposto enhances the energy of movement, which makes the spiritual uplift in the repentance scene especially acute.

But the thick cover of the shadow softens the contrasts, and the figure of the saint, visible from a distance, is rather perceived as part of the overall picture of nature, sharing with it a somewhat elegiac mood. Moonlight, ghostly and mysterious, glides over the surface of the rocks, touches the branches of a gigantic tree, seeping through the dense foliage. It may seem that the artist's preoccupation with solving a complex pictorial problem has once again diverted his attention from developing the semantic details that form the iconography of the repentance scene. However, such a conclusion would be inaccurate, since the main signs of desolation are clearly discernible even in the midst of darkness. The viewer sees not only the Crucifixion, but also the stone in the saint's hand, his cardinal's hat, and the book on the ground. Symbolic motifs form the semantic space of the painting. It seems to us that when choosing this approach, which combines interest in the transmission of artificial lighting effects with the display of a chain of "eloquent symbols", Titian was not the discoverer. We do not have the opportunity to analyze Giorgione's work, because it has been lost forever. However, there are few examples of Northern Renaissance art that treat the subject in a similar spirit, and, most importantly, they belong to the same era as the "Jerome" from the Louvre. As an example, it makes sense to mention a painting by Ertgen van Leyden from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which dates back to the 1520s. The saint is shown in her study, but also in the midst of dense darkness, which is barely dispersed by the light of a single burning candle. The outlines of a skull, a book, and a cardinal's hat appear out of the darkness. The saint is shown in oblivion, and his pose with bowed head, lowered on his right hand, corresponds to the iconographic distortion of the image of Melancholy, primarily known from Durer's famous engraving "Melancholy I".

Perhaps one of the paintings of the Northern Renaissance fell into the hands of Titian, which combined the pictorial theme of nocturne with the image of St. Jerome, provoking a creative response and arousing interest in the innovative pictorial solution of the traditional Venetian plot. However, then the theme of St. Jerome disappears from his art for almost a quarter of a century. Titian's attention shifted to other commissions, much more ambitious and, in this regard, more significant in terms of establishing his reputation as Italy's first painter. Working for Charles V and Paul III, not to mention other influential people of Italy at that time like Duke Francesco Maria della Rovere of Urbino, distracted him for a long time from thinking about the fate of the sad hermit. The image of Hieronymus reappears in Titian's art only in the late 1550s, when the painting appeared, which is now in the Brera Gallery in Milan (currently the work dates back to about 1557-1560). A comparison with the work from the Louvre gives a good idea of the innovations that marked the later version. The most important thing that you immediately notice is that the role of the terms in the relationship "figure-pictorial space" is radically changing. Dramatically increasing in size, the saint's figure now fills the foreground, giving the viewer the opportunity to appreciate the energetic sculpting of the saint's powerful body shapes, the dramatic pathos of his movements and the energy of spatial reversal. It seems that Titian again decided to enter into a correspondence competition with Michelangelo, not only reproducing the typical Florentine type of a powerful male figure of athletic shapes and proportions, but also trying to extract purely sculptural expressiveness from the pictorial interpretation of plastic volumes.

The sharp chiaroscuro enhances the impression of a strong relief of the body surface. This interpretation allows us to shift the viewer's attention to the display of experiences, the echo of which creates a powerful pathetic expression of natural forms in the surrounding space. The space of the narrow area in the foreground, where repentance is performed, is reduced to the limit. It is surrounded by large boulders, which, piled one on top of the other, create a feeling of crowding and crowding. But the most significant thing in this sense is that the level of the earth's surface rises sharply, which gives the impression that everything in the picture seems to be sliding down an inclined plane. This is how the impression of the instability of the world is formed on the visual level, evoking mournful penitential thoughts that torment the saint. Corresponding to this mood, the attributes associated with the idea of the frailty of all earthly things, the skull and the hourglass, stand out sharply from the semi-darkness of the landscape.

This interpretation, which places the act of repentance in the center of the audience's attention, was innovative not only for Titian, but also for the entire Venetian school of the Cinquecento period. It is difficult to find an analogy to a painting by Titian in the works of his predecessors who worked for him in the same city, unless, apart from some works by Lorenzo Lotto, they formally have nothing in common with a painting by Titian. On the other hand, such analogies are found in the art of Central Italian Mannerism, the importance of which for the creative development of the Venetian sharply increased in the 1550s ^{[14, pp. 1-468]}. In our opinion, a possible source of the plot invention for him could be a woodcut made by the little-known Bolognese engraver Antonio da Trento from a drawing by Parmigianino, with whom he studied for a short time during his stay in Bologna in the early 1530s. What is especially interesting is that before that, he apparently studied the art of color woodcut from the already familiar Hugo da Carpi, which in a certain respect made it natural for Titian to turn to his work, who had long been interested in the technique of color printing, perfected by Hugo.

Antonio da Trento's woodcut dates back to the late 1520s. It shows a naked male figure in a landscape, and in the same approximation to the viewer and the same strong spatial reversal as in Titian. There is an assumption that the drawing shows a Narcissus, but this is a pure hypothesis, since there are no iconographic signs of this easily recognizable mythological hero ^{[15, p. 214]}. The fact that Antonio's work is a chiaroscuro color woodcut made it even easier to translate her main pictorial motif into a painterly form. Careful study of the body's volume using straight and cross-hatching with short lines also made his image suitable for portraying in a painting as a three-dimensional shape located in an illusory space.

Titian knew the art of Parmigianino well. It has long been established that the source of the plastic motif in the depiction of the figures of one of the nymphs in the painting "Diana and Actaeon" (1556-1559, Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland) was an engraving made according to a drawing by the Parma master. Interestingly, in both cases, if we talk about graphic sheets, we are talking about the image of a figure from the back, which, apparently, could open up new possibilities of plastic expression for the Venetian when showing the human body. (In passing, we note here Titian's steady interest in the picturesque rendering of a figure in this aspect, starting from the early "Rural Concert", which is now almost unconditionally attributed to him, to the "Venus and Adonis" of 1554 from the Prado) ^{[16, pp. 35-57]}. In addition, the vagueness of the artistic content in such sheets, or at least its implicit expression, made the borrowed motifs ideally suited for subsequent repetition in a completely different meaningful context. (Later, this is exactly what happened with the figurative motifs that Titian borrowed from Giulio Romano–Marcantonio Raimondi's famous series "Ways", plotless by definition. Taken from works of Roman art, they organically entered the artistic structure of his later paintings on the subject of "Tarquin and Lucretia").

In addition, it is easy to see that the spatial solution of "St. Jerome" from Brera also has a certain similarity with the central Italian prototype. Like Parmigianino, Titian fills the background of the space with an image of a powerful tree and a steeply rising rocky surface that hides the depth from view. The choice of such a compositional solution, in turn, proved to be predetermined by a sharp increase in the value of the pictorial plane, from which the image of the raised rock surface visually coincides. This impression, in turn, is facilitated by the use of a number of stylistic techniques, primarily the manner of writing with a raised, densely saturated brush stroke. Lying on the painting surface in the form of large white clots or, conversely, sliding along it with translucent patches, a clearly visible brushstroke shifts the viewer's perception from experiencing illusory space to perceiving the stylistic expression of the picturesque texture. In this sense, "Jerome" from Brera clearly anticipates the innovations that marked the treatment of this topic in the later years of Titian, when he executed two more paintings on the subject of "The Penitent Jerome in the Desert."

Both of them are now in the museum collections of Spain, both date back to about 1575, and therefore it is not possible to say with certainty which of the two versions is the original, and which was made in its footsteps. Apparently, Titian, as has often happened to him in recent years (for example, with the same subject "Tarquin and Lucretia"), simultaneously worked on both versions, developing different versions of the visual embodiment of the same theme. With this approach, it turned out to be possible to simultaneously try out various techniques of compositional construction and different ways of interpreting the substantive basis, without subjecting oneself to the need to choose any one option. The artist's thought could move in different directions, which led to amazing discoveries and discoveries in the process of creative reinterpretation of traditional plot material.

The first of both paintings, "Saint Jerome" from the monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, was executed around 1575, which means that it belongs to a number of the most recent works by the Venetian artist, summing up the path he traveled. Like the composition from Milan, it shows the saint in the landscape at the moment of repentance, but this is where the similarity between the two works ends. The figurative and stylistic solution of the Spanish work is completely different. The first thing that makes sense to pay attention to is that the artist considers it necessary to change the picture format. Previously, it was vertical (the size of the painting is 235x125 cm), but now it is approaching square. Such an inversion of the picture structure means a noticeable change in artistic priorities. If, in the case of an earlier painting, the choice of a vertical format focused the viewer's attention on the image of the saint's figure, now the expansion of the picture space has allowed it to include an image of the surrounding landscape, where the hermit found refuge. In turn, his figure, having noticeably shifted away from the foreground, lost its sharply individual features and the dramatic character that was inherent in it before. This is clearly seen by the changes in the interpretation of his pose, which at first glance are insignificant, but in reality are very important for understanding the meaning of the painting.

In the Brera version, the saint rested his left hand on the top of the cliff, and pulled his right hand far back, which gave his body a strong spatial bend. In fact, this is nothing more than the famous figura serpentina, or rather, the principle of depicting the human figure, once introduced into artistic usage by Michelangelo ("Madonna Doni" from the Uffizi, Eve in the "Fall" scene in the paintings of the Sistine Chapel vault) and subsequently very often reproduced by Mannerists. Thanks to this position, in the spatial reversal of the figure of Jerome, the allusion to the crucifixion, shown here, near the saint, was very clearly read. By repeating the pose of the crucified Christ, Jerome seemed to assert his own fidelity in following him, as was very often the case in the art of the Northern Renaissance, where the concept of "imitation of Christ" found its exhaustive expression in such a visual form, if we use the title of Thomas Kempis' famous treatise De Imitatione Christ I (1427) to designate it [as an example: 17. C. 9-16].

Another thing is the painting from the Escorial. The allusions to the Crucifixion (directly in the image of the figure, but not from the semantic space of the painting, as we will see later) disappear here, since the pose of the saint is conveyed in a completely different way: the right arm is lowered down, and the left is bent at the elbow. This is all the more noticeable because the strong reversal in space disappears, and the figure of Hieronymus is now located in the same plane. He seems to be balancing, standing on a bent knee and resting his left hand on an open book. Well-lit, it stands out as a bright light spot on a dark background, while the crucifix above it is immersed in shadow, no longer attracting attention. It seems that such a change of iconographic priorities, when it is the book that attracts the viewer's attention in the first place, is no coincidence. In the semantic ensemble of the painting, the pictorial motif of the book has served as something more than a simple attribute of a hermit since the time of van Eck's works. As an accompanying iconographic motif, books appear on the left side of the painting, however, in our opinion, the situation is different with the one placed near the saint. The concentration of the audience's attention on the open book (and it is undoubtedly a translation of the Bible), where the lines of the text are clearly visible on the pages, makes it seem that here Titian considered it necessary to emphasize the importance of the word of God contained in the words of Holy Scripture for the salvation of the human soul.

What an unexpected train of thought! It evokes associations with a number of Renaissance works of art that express the same idea (the most famous of them, without a doubt, is Albrecht Durer's painting "The Four Apostles" from the Munich Old Pinakothek). There is no need to say much about the extent to which these works, led by the painting of Durer, were imbued with the ideas of the Reformation. Now Titian's work is on a par with them, decorating – and this looks like a completely amazing fact – the monastery of San Lorenzo, which its builder, Philip II, considered as a spiritual stronghold in a deadly struggle against the destructive "heresy" of Protestants.

There is another interesting iconographic innovation that noticeably distinguishes the Escorial painting from its previous version. We are referring to a ray of supernaturally bright mystical light, which, falling from the sky, rests on the crucifixion in front of the saint. It seems to us that this detail was borrowed by Titian (or his crowned client, Philip II) from the iconographic distortion of the image of the stigmatization of St. Francis. At one time, the outstanding American scholar Millard Miss, analyzing different versions of the image of the saint in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance art, highlighted this detail as a key one in the stigmatization scene ^{[18, pp. 11-30]}. The only difference from her iconographic output here is that there the ray comes from a seraphic crucifix floating in the sky, and here it falls on the crucifixion, falling from the sky. However, this does not change the essence of the matter. Now it is in this form that the idea of imitating Christ finds its expression, since it is the central motif in the stigmatization scene, only instead of Francis, whose popularity declined somewhat at the end of the 16th century, the artist shows Jerome.

The reason for this was undoubtedly the personal choice of the client, who was more impressed by the theologian and intellectual with whom Philip II could directly identify himself, rather than the "national saint", the idol of Italian commoners, as Francis appeared in the academic circles of the Late Renaissance. The attractiveness of Jerome's image in the eyes of the Spanish king was so great that at the same time, in the mid-1570s, he commissioned another painting by a Venetian artist with a scene of penance, which is now in the Madrid collection of Thyssen-Bornemisza. Comparing it with the contemporary version from the Escorial, you notice how much the spatial situation has changed, and with it, the semantic meaning in the picture. In the work just reviewed, Titian, in fact, returned to a compositional solution that had once been successfully tested by Giovanni Bellini. A large arch of stones overgrown with bushes separates the place of penance from the background of the painting. This technique enhances the feeling of St. Jerome's remoteness from the outside world, that is, in other words, the emphasis in the spatial solution is placed on the theme of seclusion, the need to escape from worldly temptations as a guarantee of salvation of the soul. This approach is consistent with the calm attitude of the saint and the affirmation of the idea of the meaning of the word of God as the most important instrument of salvation, as already mentioned above. In the Madrid version, everything looks completely different. At first glance, the artist returned here to a compositional solution that had been tested a quarter of a century earlier in a painting from Brera. Abruptly going up diagonally, the image of the rock surface cuts the picture space in half, sharply limiting the length of the narrow area in the foreground, where the saint froze. However, this similarity is deceptive. The eye can hardly distinguish the details of the depicted landscape in a swirling cluster of brushstrokes, which are densely covered with the painting surface. The artist does not so much depict natural motifs as he designates them with two or three strokes of the brush, and the viewer himself will have to imagine what is hidden behind this or that colorful spot, what it is meant to mean.

The world seems to be in unstoppable motion, and nothing can save it from destruction. The attributes of St. Jerome, which were so many in the Escorial work, are no longer visible, and the lion, hiding in the shadows in the lower right corner of the painting, is barely visible. Thus, the emphasis is not on the topic of hermitage, especially scholarly hermitage, which could be recalled by books lying nearby and other attributes of intellectual pursuits shown in the previous painting. He is now shifting to an act of individual repentance, the idea of which is expressed by the figure of Jerome. At first glance, his pose is as calm as in the Escorial version, but the spatial perspective enhances the drama, focusing the viewer's attention on the saint's gaze, now intently fixed on the crucifixion. Together with the open book, it serves as a salvation tool, although now another object has been added to their number, which is extremely important in this context – the image of the connected branches of a thorn tree, which serve for self-flagellation.

Thus, with the help of only a few details, the artist manages to radically change the meaning of the painting, giving an inversion of its meaningful meaning. This was an important feature of Titian's creative method in his later years, when even relatively inconspicuous features of iconography and visual style were of great importance, sometimes completely changing the meaning of the painting. As an example, it is reasonable to mention the most recent painting by a Venetian artist, the famous "Lamentation" from the Academy Gallery, which he intended for his own tombstone in the church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. One of the participants in the action is Saint Jerome, kneeling in front of the Madonna and accepting the body of his dead son from her to put it in the crypt. His appearance is initially perceived as an anachronism and, at the same time, a gross violation of all iconographic norms of the presentation of this plot. However, it is well known that in the form of Hieronymus, the artist showed himself here, giving a deeply personal meaning to everything that was happening. On such a mournful note, the life of one subject in his art ends, which absorbed the entire spiritual ethos of the story of the holy hermit and exhaustively expressed it in various forms for almost sixty years.