The study is really a part of a monastery assigned to St.Jerome himself, his books, manuscripts, and other such possessions.

He has a pot of flowers and a dwarf tree, and a towel to dry his hands on, and a beautiful chair at his desk.

He has taken off his dusty shoes and left them at the foot of the steps.
The painter of this picture, must have had in his mind a very happy idea of St.Jerome.Others have sometimes painted him as they thought he looked when living in a horrible desert, as he did for four years.
But at the time this picture was painted, about the year 1470, St.
Jerome in his study was a more usual subject for painters than St.
Jerome in the desert.

One reason of this was that in Italy, in the latter half of the fifteenth century, St.Jerome was considered the patron saint of scholars, and for the first time since the fall of the Roman Empire, scholars were perhaps the most influential people of the day.
[Illustration: ST.

JEROME IN HIS STUDY From the picture by Antonello da Messina, in the National Gallery, London] Of course you all know something about the remarkable revival of learning in the fifteenth century, which started in Italy, spread northward, and reached England in the reign of Henry VIII.