The Penitent Saint Jerome (Stockholm)

About the artwork

The cardinal’s hat is a later artistic convention, not an office Jerome held. It also distinguishes the Stockholm canvas from its close counterpart in Grenoble, where no hat appears. La Tour uses the attribute to identify the scholar-saint even as the kneeling figure seems detached from its status.

The Nationalmuseum received this painting in 1917. Its 1928 catalogue called it a work by the Spaniard Juan Bautista Maíno. During the Paris exhibition of 1934, director Axel Gauffin studied the assembled La Tours and announced its return to the museum’s French rooms. Even Hermann Voss had confused its location with Grenoble in 1931.

Featured in: Georges de La Tour’s Bible Paintings: The Candle Painter Hidden Under Other Names

What does Philippians 3:7 mean?

In Philippians 3, Paul lists the religious and social credentials he could claim, then counts what had been gain as loss for the sake of Christ. He is reassessing the grounds of confidence, not condemning learning or every visible possession.

Jerome’s hat, displaced to the wall, offers a visual way to consider that reassessment. The connection is an editorial reading of a later saint beside Paul’s words; it does not claim that La Tour designed the picture around Philippians.

The unused hat makes Paul’s reassessment of gain and loss concrete without turning Jerome’s later identity into the subject of Paul’s letter.

Sources

Image source and rights declaration.

Philippians 3 — Berean Standard Bible. The paired text read with its surrounding chapter.

Georges de La Tour’s Bible Paintings: The Candle Painter Hidden Under Other Names. Exact-work research, history and interpretive qualifications for this reading.

Les Peintres de la réalité en France au XVIIe siècle (1934). Historical catalogue, used with the owning institution’s current attribution and dating.