Sainted

One of the pictures we saw the other day at the National Gallery reminded me of someone with whom I used to work and today I wanted to recover that painting.

First attempt was to ask google for 'red john luke saint italian painting'. No luck. Try images for same and get a lot of red, but all kinds of other stuff as well, including plenty of female nudes which have nothing to do with the search terms. Searching images clearly not that hot yet.

Second attempt was to drop the names of the saints, of which I was uncertain, and ask for 'red cloak saint italian painting'. Still no luck.

Third attempt was to add hat and I struck oil at this point. One of the hits talks about red paint in the context of a painting by Masaccio of SS Jerome & John the Baptist. From there I get to a catalogue of Masaccio's painting in Wikipedia with the painting in question being No. 22. Wikipedia even lets me take a copy which is not the size of a postage stamp (left).

The resemblance with my former colleague is not as striking on the screen as it was on the panel, but it is still there. But does anyone know why Saint Jerome, whom I would have thought a less important saint than John the Baptist, gets his cloak done in a higher grade, longer life sort of red paint? A sort of paint which does not fade? I don't suppose the fact that his death-day is just one day later than my birth-day has much to do with it. Nor the fact that he was born in the far north of what used to be Yugoslavia.