Leonardo, St. Jerome, and the Illyrians' Church in Rome

This study is based on an intuition of Alberto Carpiceci, who more than forty years ago suggested the existence of a link between the small church sketched in Leonardo da Vinci’s St. Jerome in the Wilderness and the built church of S. Girolamo degli Schiavoni in Rome. Starting from this intuition, the authors have tried to verify the concrete possibility that during his Roman stay, Leonardo da Vinci worked on a project for the new church. In the absence of documents attesting to any link between Leonardo and the Illyrian community in Rome, the primary documentation is reduced to three elements. First, the painting of St. Jerome in Vaticano, with the little Renaissance church sketched on it. Critics agree on attributing it to Leonardo, but disagree both on the name of the commitment and on its temporal collocation, also in virtue of the anatomical qualities of the subject portrayed. Second, an autograph sketch of Leonardo conserved at the Galeria dell’Accademia in Venice. It represents a longitudinal-plan church, somewhat rare in his architectural designs but sharing many elements with that depicted on the St. Jerome. Third, the church of S. Girolamo degli Schiavoni in Rome, especially its façade, which is considered by scholars to be anachronistic, and the context of the Porto di Ripetta in which it was built at the end of the sixteenth century, from a historical, geographical, artistic and even archaeological point of view.