The Dream of Saint Jerome (1476): Artwork and History

The Dream of Saint Jerome (1476) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Matteo di Giovanni (Italian, c. 1430–1495).

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

This painting and its companion, Saint Augustine’s Vision, depict scenes from the life of Saint Jerome, the scholar credited with translating the Bible from Hebrew into Latin, a more widely known language at the time, so that more people would be able to read it. The first scene shows Jerome’s dream of being punished by a heavenly council for preferring ancient Greek and Roman texts to the Christian Bible. In the second painting, Saint Augustine is composing Jerome’s eulogy when he is interrupted by a vision of the saint accompanied by John the Baptist, who praises Jerome as his equal.

Object facts

• Title: The Dream of Saint Jerome
• Date: 1476
• Artist attribution: Matteo di Giovanni (Italian, c. 1430–1495)
• Place of origin: Italy
• Medium: Tempera on panel
• Dimensions: 37.4 × 65.7 cm (14 3/4 × 25 7/8 in.); Framed: 43.5 × 72.1 × 6.1 cm (17 1/8 × 28 3/8 × 2 3/8 in.)
• Type: Painting
• Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe
• Reference number: 1933.1018

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection

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The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.