Vittore Carpaccio, Martin Mladošić, and Saint Jerome: A Mirror of Late Medieval Devotion

Abstract

This paper focuses on the representation of St Jerome in the Zadar Polyptych, painted by Vittore Carpaccio around 1496 and commissioned by Martin Mladošić. Approaching it as a commission and offering made by a pious canon of Zadar’s cathedral church, the scene has been analyzed in the context of spiritual changes that occurred during this period, through the prism of personal and Christocentric piety. This paper brings new interpretations of the depiction, seeing it as an expression of the commissioner’s meditative vision, to whom the saint served as a model of pious Christian life and the embodiment of the imitatio Christi ideal. Even though St Jerome was already venerated as a patron saint of Dalmatia, this paper underlines the self-identification of the Zadar canon with the saint, expressed through moral and spiritual virtues, as the main motivation behind the commission. Interpreting the work as an expression of the popular Renaissance cult of St Jerome during the Late Middle Ages and the beginning of the Early Modern Period, it emphasizes the involvement of Zadar’s cultural circle in the pan-European spiritual, artistic, intellectual, and cultural currents of the era.