[1] Its original location is unknown, though Gamba's theory is that it was an altarpiece for Santa Maria dei Miracoli, Venice, where Jacopo Sansovino mentioned seeing a Saint Jerome by Bellini completed in 1489.

In both works Saint Jerome is shown reading in the desert, referring to both his life as a hermit and his production of the Vulgate Bible.

[citation needed] The work in Florence shows a crucifix on a long shaft, which the saint used as an aid to prayer.

His usual lion is shown, as are some birds, a lizard, a squirrel on a branch and one deer chasing another, all of which probably had symbolic meanings.

[2] This marked the beginning of a new conception of landscape painting, connected to the predella of the Pesaro Altarpiece or the New York Saint Francis in Ecstasy, whose figures and background are lighter and whose atmosphere is freer than in earlier works.