...have you ever seen a more tortured guy than him? there's a reason why his aches and pains have been so exactly detailed. you see, the ideas of the renaissance meant different things in northern europe than it did in italy. northerners, who practiced their religion in much more stringent ways, tended to portray their religious subjects as suffering as much pain as possible. in their view, the more the suffering, the stronger the faith. thus, many of their devotional images showed Biblical figures with sores and wounds all over their bodies (with respect to the martyr's particular form of death of course). our saint example is showing the physical signs of his penitence (probably starvation by the looks of those ribs) to the figure of Christ on the cross to prove that he's truly suffered.

...aside from a difference in treatment of subject, northern artists also focused on different techniques and elements of painting than the italian guys. they loved to work in oil (this image was done with oils on wood panel) in order to create as precise and detailed an image as possible. this is a small version of the image, but up close it's possible to see the completely different textures between rock, smooth pebbles, and wood. heck, you can even make out the distinct bones on st. jerome's foot. such attention to details is what many northern renaissance artists strived for in their works.

...realistic-quality wise, though there are some amazing textures to be found, the perspective is a bit lacking. in fact, that ground plane is so titled that st. jerome's about to lose his footing and slide into the viewer's lap any second. it's another sign of the difference between the northern and italian renaissance artists. while the folks in the south labored to get their linear perspective proportionately arranged, the guys in the north fussed about getting as much detail into their works as possible. it's the same renaissance idea at work (depict subjects as realistically as possible) but it's quite interesting to see how a seperation by culture and territory can take one idea into two directions. neither party ever really aquired the same level of interest in the other's style as in their own.