The Study of Saint Jerome: between Desert and Occupation

In painting Jerome conventionally has two sites, two grounds. He moves between the study and the wilderness; sites of occupation and of desertion. The most famous depiction of Jerome at work is that of Antonello da Messina. Here the study is a contained wooden structure, a kind of physical library where emblems are sorted on shelves and steps and multiple books are open to his gaze. The study itself is situated like an island within the enclave of a cathedral. A shell within a shell. Interiority is all. The desk is an apparatus for mediation. The study is the place of connection.

In 2009 I built a version of Jerome’s study in an East London Warehouse. The study was offered as a site for occupation. Readings, performances and installed works were staged over a two week period. The discussion developed to take shape in a collaborative online work framed against the backdrop of jubilee and riot and the student occupations of 2012.

The construction of the study is part of an ongoing project refiguring objects from paintings; the telescope of Guercino’s Endymion, the Magdalen’s broken necklace and Melencolia’s dress and block and most recently the stones and rocks from Fouquet and Crivelli’s Saint Stephens. The sense is to gain a material understanding of historic ideological spaces and imaging systems in the present.