The period which witnessed this great mental change is well known as the Renaissance or 'rebirth.' When you first looked at this picture you must have thought it very different from the two earlier ones.

Such a subject could only have been painted thus in an age when men admired the scholar's life.

Though the figure is called that of St.Jerome, there is really nothing typically saintly about him; he is only serious.

The subjects chosen by painters of the Renaissance were no longer almost solely religious, but began to be selected from the world of everyday life; even when the subject was taken from Christian legend, it was now generally treated as an event happening in the actual world of the painter's own day.
The manner in which this picture is painted is still more suggestive of change than the subject itself.

Our artist knew a great deal about the new science of perspective, for instance.