Jan Sanders van Hemessen's picture of Saint Jerome occupied a place of honour in Rockox's art gallery or 'groote saleth', where P.P. Ruben's famous 'Samson and Delilah' deservedly hung, and is currently the only work from Rockox's original collection that is now in situ in the museum that was his house. What we are attempting is to determine St. Jerome's place in the pictorial art of the Renaissance and the Baroque in Western Europe. During the sixteenth century, he was the subject of thirty per cent of all portrayals of saints, and remained of great importance in the pictorial art of the seventeenth century, too, being an iconic figure for the Counter-Reformation and humanism. Exhibition: Rockoxhuis, Antwerp, Belgium (18.1.-13.4.2014).