Saint Jerome in His Study
Albrecht Dürer
1514
Albrecht Dürer
1514
"Suspended above the threshold in the immediate foreground is a large, ripe gourd still retaining its leaves and
vine as if freshly cut from the garden. The meticulous care
with which this engraving is composed and our general
knowledge of Dürer's use of plant symbolism indicate that
so prominent a motif must have some particular significance. Specific identification of the plant itself poses no
difficulty. It is a common variety of gourd classified in the
Latin genus Cucurbita and known in German as Kürbis. A
woodcut illustration taken from the German edition
of a herbal published in 1485 provides an adequate though
crudely schematized likeness.
Dürer's inclusion of the gourd is indeed meaningful, for
this very plant was the subject of a philological controversy
which concerned Jerome for at least a decade. The debate
to which it refers involves a biblical passage from the Book
of Jonah (4:6): "And the Lord God prepared a gourd, and
made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow
over his head, to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was
exceeding glad of the gourd." In his edition of the Latin
Vulgate Jerome translates the name of this plant as hedera,
a type of ivy, rejecting the older Latin reading of cucurbita
or gourd. As we learn from his commentary on the Book of Jonah written ca. 396, Jerome was attacked fiercely for this
alteration. In the lengthy section of his commentary devoted to this verse Jerome argues with satirical vehemence
against his critics
Characteristically, Jerome concentrates on the Hebrew
text as a basis for his interpolation. Jerome recognizes that
the Hebrew term for the plant - ciceion or kikayon - refers to
the castor oil plant which grew abundantly in Palestine.
He notes that the botanical nature of this leafy vine which
sprouts quickly and withers in the sunlight accords well with
that described in the Bible. Since Jerome knows of no Latin
or Greek word for the castor oil plant he selects hedera which
he implies is physically closer than the cucurbita to the ciceion.
Furthermore, he insists that the Greek term used in the
Septuagint version of the Jonah passage is more correctly
rendered hedera than cucurbita as earlier translators had maintained. The conflict over Jonah's bower flared up again
later in Africa, provoking an important exchange of letters
between Jerome and Augustine in the years 403-04."
Parshall, Peter W., "Albrecht Dürer's Saint Jerome in his Study: A Philological Reference" in The Art Bulletin, vol. 53, nº. 3 (Setembro 1971), pp. 303-305.
