HIDDEN MASTERPIECES: Caravaggio's "St. Jerome

MONTSERRAT, "the Saw-Toothed Mountain," is one of the holiest places in the shrine-rich Mediterranean world. Rising in sheer purple splendor above the plain 30 miles inland from Barcelona, Spain, the mountain is topped with spires of steeple-like rock. And there, inside the crown, perches an ancient fortress-monastery, where the "Black Virgin" is enshrined. Legend has it that the dark wooden Madonna with the Child upright in her lap appeared as if by miracle within a cave in the mountain one day ten centuries ago. First a church, then a monastery was built near the peak in her honor. The shrine became a military strongpoint in the struggle between Catalonian Christians and Moors; the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V prayed before the Black Virgin many times, and Saint Ignatius Loyola found his vocation in her presence. Today, she is the legendary protector of all Catalonia, and every devout Catalonian makes a pilgrimage to her shrine at least once in life.

But of all the thousands who visit Montserrat, only a handful of men (women are forbidden) is allowed to penetrate the monastery cloister, where a splendid art collection has been formed in the Virgin's honor. Among the hidden masterpieces on the cloister walls, Caravaggio's St. Jerome is perhaps the most compelling.

Before his early death in 1609, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio painted no fewer than three St. Jeromes. The most renowned version is in Rome's Villa Borghese, but the best--done from the same model--may well be Montserrat's. The Montserrat canvas shows the saint in repose, with only a skull for company, in peaceful contemplation. It has all the power of Caravaggio's drawing, which influenced Rubens. It is a striking example of Caravaggio's favorite color combination--red and black--which has influenced painters from Georges de La Tour to the abstract-expressionist Mathieu. It lifts realism to an exalted plane by making the figure a light in darkness, as Rembrandt was later to do. And finally, it offers deep insight into St. Jerome, whose devout, blunt, passionate nature appealed strongly to Caravaggio's own.

Dalmatian-born in 342, St. Jerome became a man of letters (Greek and Latin) in Rome, took ship for Antioch. There he dreamed that he was brought before the judgment seat of Christ and ordered to identify himself. He said that he was a Christian, but this was denied: "Thou liest. Thou art a Ciceronian, for where thy treasure is, there is thy heart also." Deeply troubled by the dream, Jerome re tired into the desert of Calchis for four long years of mys tic solitude. On his return, he learned Hebrew and then devoted the main energies of his life to correcting and im proving the Latin texts of the Old and New Testaments in Rome and Bethlehem, later translated the Bible into its most enduring edition, the Latin Vulgate. He was an ex travagant polemicist, once characterized dark-skinned St. Augustine as "a little Numidian ant." After Alaric's sack of Rome in 404, Jerome laid aside his pen for refugee work.

"Who would have believed," he wrote, "that the daughters of that mighty city would one day be wandering as serv ants and slaves on the shores of Egypt and Africa? Today we must translate the words of the Scriptures into deeds, and instead of speaking saintly words we must act them."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.