The Work
Domenichino's Last Communion of Saint Jerome (1614), now in the Vatican Pinacoteca, was considered the second-greatest painting in Rome throughout the 17th and 18th centuries - second only to Raphael's Transfiguration, also in the Vatican. It depicts the emaciated scholar-saint Jerome receiving the Eucharist on his deathbed, surrounded by weeping monks, as the physical end of the life of the man who translated the Bible into Latin coincides with his final reception of the Body and Blood of the incarnate Word he had devoted his life to rendering. The painting was so highly regarded that it was moved to safety during Napoleon's Italian campaigns.
Biblical Source
John 6:54 - "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day" - is the eucharistic promise that the painting visualizes at the moment of its most personal application: the dying man receiving the sacrament as the threshold between temporal death and eternal life. 2 Timothy 4:7-8 - "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness" - frames Jerome's death as the completion of a life entirely dedicated to Scripture: he who spent sixty years translating the Bible receives the Word Incarnate in his final moments.
Philippians 1:21 - "For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain" - provides the Pauline theology of death that Domenichino's painting embodies: death as completion, as the final reception of what one has pursued throughout life.
Artist
Domenichino (Domenico Zampieri, 1581-1641) was a student of Annibale Carracci and one of the leading figures of the Bolognese school of Baroque painting. His style combined the classical restraint of Raphael's influence with the emotional expressiveness of the Baroque, producing work that 17th-century critics considered the ideal balance between classical form and affective content. The Last Communion of Saint Jerome is his masterpiece, a work that integrates complex theological content with genuine human emotion.
Iconography
The composition organizes itself around the dying Jerome's reception of the host from the priest. The surrounding monks display a range of grief responses, from the monk directly supporting Jerome's frail body to others weeping or covering their faces. The angels in the upper right carry instruments of the Passion - the cross, the crown of thorns - connecting Jerome's death to Christ's. The emaciated body of the scholar - recognizable from the tradition of Jerome in the wilderness, beating his breast before the crucifix - is here transformed: the penitent becomes the recipient, the one who spent his life reaching toward God now receives God's approach.