St Jerome in his cell.

Even when Dürer was not illustrating books, his imagery often showed an abiding interest in books as vehicles for learning and religious expression. Dürer’s woodcut of St Jerome in his Cell, a powerful yet intimate image of a Christian theologian at work, reflects the renewed interest in biblical scholarship that spread across Europe on the eve of the Reformation. Surrounded by books, writing implements, a devotional Crucifix and a faithful lion who guards his studious retreat, the biblical translator embodies the ideal of inspired theological study and thereby fulfils his role as the patron saint of all scholars.

As in most of his religious prints, Dürer paid careful attention to the natural appearance of his subject so as to make its contents and setting familiar and relevant to its 16th-century viewers. Yet he also invested his print with symbolism. The broad cardinal’s hat and fur-lined robes signify the saint’s high rank in the church hierarchy, even though the cardinalate was not instituted until several centuries after Jerome’s death in 420. The saint’s books are familiar attributes of lifelong study, but his advanced age and the hourglass behind him allude to the unyielding passage of time. The wooden Crucifix reminds Dürer’s viewers that the Christian Saviour is always omnipresent. The curtain, a dramatic spatial element, appears to have been drawn aside just for us, providing within an example of the virtues of a quiet, contemplative life.

In her blog 'The Hidden Secrets in Albrecht Dürer’s Life and Art', Elizabeth Garner notes the differences between a preparatory drawing for the woodcut (Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan) and the changes that Dürer made. The lion is animated in the drawing but benignly dozing in the subsequent woodcut (and engraving). The hourglass is moved to a more prominent position. The telescope and quadrant in the drawing disappear in the woodcut (but reappear in the famous Melencolia I  engraving of 1514). The Dürer family emblem of open doors with a circle in the middle has also been removed for unknown reasons from the woodcut. 

This woodcut was an important prototype for Dürer’s St Jerome in his study (1514), one of the artist's Meisterstiche ('Big Three') engravings, and has been somewhat sidelined as a consequence. 

See:

Elizabeth Garner, 'The Hidden Secrets in Albrecht Dürer’s Life and Art', http://www.albrechtdurerblog.com/secrets-st-jerome-cell-1511/

Elizabeth Perkins Prothro Galleries, 'Books and Prints by Albrecht Dürer', 2011 http://www.smu.edu/Bridwell/SpecialCollectionsandArchives/Exhibitions/Durer2011/Introduction

Mark Stocker, Curator Historical International Art                                     December 2016