“Leonardo da Vinci’s St. Jerome”

This year marks the 500th Anniversary of the death Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) and to honor the occasion, The Metropolitan Museum Of Art is offering New Yorkers a rare chance to see his unfinished masterpiece, St. Jerome Praying in the Wilderness. The work portrays one of the key theologians of the early Christian Church during his two-year sojourn as a hermit in the Syrian Desert. It wasn’t unusual for Leonardo to leave works in an incomplete state since other interests—science, designing weapons, trying to build a flying machine—often distracted him from his art. All the same St Jerome shows Da Vinci at the height of his powers.