Rembrandt never traveled far from the flat Dutch landscape, yet here he placed Jerome in a mountainous Italian setting. The artist lifted the elaborate architecture of the distant buildings from Venetian prints and drawings produced over a hundred years earlier; yet, the ambiguity of the overall space anticipates the work of Cézanne two centuries later. The saint abandons himself to a book as his trusted lion stands guard. Rembrandt's spare linework causes Jerome seemingly to dissolve in the noonday sun, a visual metaphor of his meditations transporting him to a sacred realm.