Tilmann Riemenschneider by Bier Justus;

Author:Bier, Justus; [Bier, Justus]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2021-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

PLATES 9A-D. St. Jerome and the Lion. About 1505–1510.

Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio. Alabaster. Height 15 in. (37.8 cm).

The small alabaster group of St. Jerome and the Lion deserves to be regarded as one of Riemenschneider’s most important works. The artistry of carving and strength of feeling achieved on such a small scale are, in their way, as remarkable as the grandiose display of these same qualities in the great Creglingen Altarpiece. The group was acquired by the Cleveland Museum in 1946 (the first of three Riemenschneider works to enter this collection). It remains the only example in a collection in the United States of Riemenschneider’s rare use of alabaster.

Dressed in cardinal’s robes, St. Jerome is seated on a bench set on grass-covered ground, the grass indicated through shallow relief cutting and the use of green paint, of which only traces remain. (The same color appears in one of the reliefs on the Bamberg imperial tomb and on several other works in alabaster. Riemenschneider quite often used touches of color and gold to enrich the surface of his stone sculptures.) The bench is visible only from one side and from the rear. The saint’s head inclines to the left as he looks down with compassion on the docile lion sitting close to his left side. The lion’s left foreleg is held up for the saint’s surgery. With his left hand Jerome holds the leg in a firm but gentle grip: with his right, he tries delicately, by means of a “scalpel,” to extract the thorn from the injured paw. His cardinal’s hat rests on his knee, helping to keep his arm and hand steady. The fine-featured face of the saint is careworn. Deep lines are etched around his eyes and on his brow, and the spare flesh reveals wide cheek-bones, a long lean jaw, and pointed chin. The countenance as a whole not only shows the concentration and compassion of the moment but seems also to bear witness to years of an ascetic, spiritually rigorous existence.

The incident that Riemenschneider represents here—that of St. Jerome extracting the thorn from the lion’s paw—comes from one of the legends told about this great scholar-saint. This incident was particularly popular with artists of the fifteenth century, who set the scene either in the saint’s study or in an open landscape representing the desert of Chalcis, where Jerome lived as a penitent and hermit for some years. A panel-painting of the second type by the Flemish artist Rogier van der Weyden, which is now in the Detroit Institute of Arts, seems to have furnished the basic model for Riemenschneider’s sculpture. The main difference is that, while van der Weyden’s figure is seated on a rock ledge, Riemenschneider continues the tradition of showing St. Jerome “in cathedra” and thereby characterizing him as the great Latin doctor even in the outdoor scene. Riemenschneider has also added a feature of his own invention by changing the position of the cardinal’s hat and placing it on the saint’s knee, to support his arm and steady his hand as he extracts the thorn.

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