The Burial of Saint Jerome

Dating to between 1503 and 1508, this rare and important panel originally formed part of the high altar retable executed by Alejo Fernández for the monastery of San Jerónimo de Valparaíso in Córdoba. It depicts the burial of Saint Jerome, the fourth-century Church Father whose ascetic example inspired the Hieronymite order. Eight tonsured friars in the traditional habit of the order (white tunic beneath a brown scapular and hooded mantle) surround the saint's body as it lies upon a rustic bier of bound logs. Jerome's gaunt, aged features, half-closed eyes, and grayish lips leave no doubt that the saint has already passed; yet his gilded halo, rendered in relief in the Byzantine manner, signals his heavenly glory. In the foreground, one friar reads the office for the dead through spectacles, while others carry a processional cross, swing a censer, sprinkle holy water, and bear tall candles whose flames gutter in the wind. The figure blowing on the censer to rekindle its coals is among the most accomplished passages in the composition: the artist has captured the monk's inflated cheeks and half-shut eyes, and has allowed the glow of the embers to warm his features with delicate strokes of white and rose. Through a stone archway behind the mourners, pairs of friars converse in a monastic courtyard, while a distant hillside dotted with tiny figures and a graduated sky lend atmospheric depth.

Alejo Fernández is now understood to have been of German origin, as confirmed by a document of 1513 describing him as 'Alexo pintor alemán'. His training likely occurred in the Rhine region (perhaps in Westphalia, near the workshop of Derick Baegert in Wesel) before he arrived in Spain as a fully formed artist. He is first recorded in Córdoba in the 1490s, where he married María, daughter of the painter Pedro Fernández, whose surname he apparently adopted upon entering the local guild. Around 1508, Fernández moved to Seville alongside the sculptor Jorge Fernández, a frequent collaborator, and together they became involved in the great project of the main altarpiece of Seville Cathedral, on which Alejo worked until 1525. By the 1520s, Alejo Fernández had become the leading painter in Seville—a city where more than thirty painters were active by 1526—and his style was widely imitated by contemporaries, including Juan de Zamora. His workshop received commissions from across the Crown of Castile, and assistants played an increasing role in executing large projects, leading to stylistic variations in his later works.

The Valparaíso altarpiece was commissioned by Diego Fernández de Córdoba y Arellano (1464-1518), 1st Marquis of Comares, and his wife Juana Pacheco. The couple had been granted patronage of the main chapel on 25 November 1502 with license to be buried there. According to the monastery's eighteenth-century Libro Tumbo, now in the Provincial Historical Archive of Córdoba, they 'had the altarpiece painted and gilded' at a cost of 240,000 maravedís, with work beginning in 1503; a further document of 1509 records final payments. Writing in 1604, Pablo de Céspedes noted that the retable included 'stories from the life of Christ and the life of St Jerome', and that a compartment depicting the Last Supper bore the artist's signature (P. de Céspedes, 'Discurso de la comparación de la antigua y moderna pintura y escultura', in J.A. Ceán Bermúdez, ed., Diccionario histórico de los más ilustres profesores de Bellas Artes en España, V, Madrid, 1800, p. 304). In 1800, Ceán Bermúdez saw the altarpiece still in situ and observed that 'the merit of these panels corresponds to the best that was done at the time in Spain' (J.A. Ceán Bermúdez, op. cit., II, p. 86).

Following the dissolution of Spanish monasteries in 1835, the contents of San Jerónimo de Valparaíso were dispersed. Diego José Monroy y Aguilera (1786-1856), a Córdoban painter and director of the Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes de Córdoba, oversaw the transfer of property from the monastery. In April 1836, Monroy sold several panels—including one described as a 'Death of Saint Jerome'—to Baron Isidore Taylor (1789-1879), an agent of King Louis Philippe charged with acquiring Spanish works for the Galerie Espagnole. When the gallery opened at the Louvre in 1838, the present panel appeared in the catalogue as a work by 'Pedro de Córdoba', with dimensions of 132 x 89 cm (Notice des tableaux de la Galerie Espagnole, Paris, 1838, p. 25, no. 79). After Louis Philippe's abdication during the Revolution of 1848, the collection moved with him to Claremont House, Surrey. Following his death in 1850, it was sold by his sons at Christie's on 6 May 1853, where the panel appeared as lot 11 under the same attribution. The identification of the Death of Saint Jerome from Fernández's altarpiece with the work attributed to Pedro de Córdoba in Louis Philippe's collection has been argued by José María Palencia Cerezo, José Antonio Vigara Zafra, and Juan Antonio Gómez Sánchez. It was not until recently that Alberto Velasco Gonzàlez identified the present panel as that very work (A. Velasco Gonzàlez, loc. cit.)

This entry draws on the research of Alberto Velasco Gonzàlez (op. cit.) to whom we are grateful for sharing his publication and endorsing the attribution (written communication; 11 December 2025).