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Saint Jerome and the Lion (From the former Church of St. Peter in Erfurt)
About the Artwork
This statue shows an important moment from a story about Saint Jerome. One day Jerome encountered a hurt lion. He removed a thorn from its paw, and the grateful animal became Jerome’s lifelong companion. This sculpture is made of alabaster, a soft stone suited for carving fine detail. Look closely! You can see flecks of paint and gold from when it was originally painted. Conservators looked at this sculpture under a microscope and found that the lion once had a red mouth, yellow fur, and black claws.
Provenance
Private Collection, Paris ?-1913: Aynard Collection, Lyons Harry Fuld, Frankfurt am Main ?-1946: (Rosenberg & Steibel, New York, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) 1946-: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Exhibition history
Art, A Means to World Understanding. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 16-April 10, 1949). Art and Humanism in the Renaissance. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 23-February 25, 1962). Work of Tilman Riemenschneider. North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC (organizer) (October 6-November 11, 1962). Traditions and Revisions: Themes from the History of Sculpture. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 24-November 16, 1975). Tilman Riemenschneider - Frühe Werke (Tilman Riemenschneider - Early Works). Mainfrankisches Museum, Wurzburg, Germany (organizer) (September 4-November 1, 1981). Object Lessons: Cleveland Creates an Art Museum. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 7-September 8, 1991). Tilman Riemenschneider: Master Sculptor of the Late Middle Ages. National Gallery of Art, Landover, MD (organizer) (October 3, 1999-January 9, 2000); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (February 7-May 14, 2000). Sacred Gifts and Worldly Treasures: Medieval Masterworks from the Cleveland Museum of Art. National Museum of Bavaria, Munich, Germany (May 10-September 16, 2007); J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA (October 30, 2007-January 20, 2008); Frist Art Museum, Nashville, TN (February 13-June 7, 2009). From Van Eyck to Dürer: Artistic Exchanges between the Netherlands and Central, Eastern and Northern Europe c.1420-1530. Groeningemuseum, Stedelijke Musea, Brugge, Belgium (October 28, 2010-January 30, 2011). Alabaster. European Sculpture from the Middle Ages to the Baroque. M Leuven, Leuven, Belgium (organizer) (October 14, 2022-February 26, 2023) https://www.mleuven.be/programma/albast. Riemenschneider and Late Medieval Alabaster. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 26-July 23, 2023). ArtLens Reimagined: The Intersection of Art, Technology, and Innovation. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (July 23, 2026-September 1, 2031).
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Tilman Riemenschneider (German, active Würzburg, c. 1460–1531)
- Date
- c. 1495
- Medium
- alabaster, traces of polychromy
- Dimensions
- Overall: 37.8 x 28.1 x 15.9 cm (14 7/8 x 11 1/16 x 6 1/4 in.)
- Type
- Sculpture
- Classification
- Sculpture
- Department
- Medieval Art
- Credit line
- Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund
- Accession no.
- 1946.82
More by Tilman Riemenschneider in museum collections
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 7, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Open-access museum record · AT-00000282
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