Last Communion of St Jerome (Botticelli)

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The Last Communion of St. Jerome
Sandro Botticelli, 1494-1495
Tempera on panel
34.3 × 25.5 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

The Last Communion of St. Jerome, is a painting by the Italian Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli, finished around 1494-1495. It is housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York City.

The small picture is inspired to one of the three apocryphal letters of Eusebius, according to which, before dying, St. Jerome received the Last Communion by St. Eusebius himself. The choice of this scene, far less frequent than the usual depiction of St. Jerome in his studio, has been connected to Savonarola's predication in Florence at the time the work was executed; the latter's commissioner, identified by some scholars as the rich merchant Francesco del Pugliese, would be in fact a followed of the Ferrarese preacher^[1].