Landscape with St Jerome c. 1520

Editor: Here we have Domenico Campagnola's "Landscape with St Jerome," a drawing from around 1520 currently residing in the Städel Museum. There's something about this sepia-toned sketch – it feels so raw and immediate, almost like catching a fleeting moment. What strikes you most when you look at it? Curator: Fleeting, you say? I like that! It's funny, isn't it, how a 500-year-old drawing can still feel like a whispered secret? For me, it’s the landscape itself, teeming and vibrant, that demands attention, swallowing Jerome. He almost seems incidental, doesn't he? A hermit wrestling with demons, inner and outer. It makes you wonder, what landscapes do we carry within *ourselves*? Do you get that sense of an inner world spilling onto the page? Editor: Definitely. He's so small compared to the overall composition of the artwork, you have to squint your eyes to notice the figure right away! Now that you mention the "inner demons," it gives a glimpse into the religious devotion of the 16th Century! So is the artist intentionally highlighting the "outer" struggles rather than Jerome's struggles with his inner self? Curator: Exactly. Instead of grand pronouncements, there's something so quietly powerful, so deeply personal, in his attempt to merge the spiritual and the terrestrial. I'm always amazed by how the smallest gesture, in art and life, can contain universes. Don't you think? Editor: I do! Now that you've walked through your perception, it feels like the image now breathes with new air for me! Thanks! Curator: And thank *you* for making me see it anew!