Mountainous Landscape with Saint Jerome

As a young painter, Paul Bril travelled from Antwerp to Rome, where he became the most influential landscape painter of his day. Bril painted this landscape on copper, a base that is excellently suited to painting fine details.

On the left, we see St Jerome, who is praying and doing penance in solitude. It is an imaginary landscape, like those painted by Flemish artists in the sixteenth century. The colours run from brown, through green to blue, making the landscape appear to stretch into infinity.