St. Jerome in the Wilderness

Leonardo da Vinci left St. Jerome in the Wilderness unfinished around 1482. The painting shows the elderly saint kneeling in a rocky landscape, beating his chest with a stone in penance. A lion, Jerome's traditional attribute, lies at his feet.

The painting's incomplete state reveals Leonardo's working methods. An amber underpainting shows through where color was never applied. Jerome's anatomy demonstrates Leonardo's detailed study of human musculature, particularly visible in the saint's emaciated body. The painting had a strange history: it was cut into pieces, with the head used as a table top and the body as a cabinet panel. Cardinal Joseph Fesch reassembled the fragments in the 19th century. It now resides in the Vatican Museums.