The luminosity unleashed by the image of the penitential Saint Jerome, inspired by a markedly devotional desire, leads us to orientate its author's research towards a rather circumscribed cultural and geographical area. A clue suggested by that refined yet vital pink, mottled and undulating, that pervades the schematic stone slabs right from the foreground, marking the inlets, marking the rock's course, brings the mind back to the delicate examples transmitted by the legacy of Piero della Francesca, and Fra' Carnevale, rather than Domenico Veneziano in the Florentine altarpiece of Santa Lucia dei Magnoli.

Knowing that in the Florence that followed the presence of the latter, there was not an equal amount of attention generated towards this painting that is as delicate as it is singular, as limpid as it is dreamy, the chromatic lesson that is transmitted through the Piero Franciscan palette that developed along the eastern route of the peninsula, in the territories of Montefeltro all the way to Romagna, remains pursuable. Here, the essential narrative pertaining to the hermit saint who made the drastic choice, including the symbolic and sparse bushes of sprouts emerging from the stones, culminates in the marginal foreshortening of the landscape with cypress trees and golden foliage breaking through the clear, September sky, barely veiled with white cirrus.

A cultural basin of tender and naive inspiration, we said, inspired by the recent memories of Piero and Melozzo da Forlì, which saw the growth of interesting personalities such as those of Marco Palmezzano, the brothers Bernardino and Francesco Zaganelli, Benedetto Coda and Gerolamo Marchesi da Cotignola. It is precisely on the latter that our attention is focused for the correspondence he dedicates to the foreshortening of the figures, or rather to the foreshortening of the heads turned upwards of those of his characters predisposed to the pursuit of celestial inspiration. A character stylistic trait that probably derives from the repertoire of his early masters. Gerolamo was probably born around 1476-'77 or around 1480, following Vasari's indications of a death at the age of sixty-nine around 1549 (G. Vasari, Le Vite, Florence 1550, pp. 274-276, 1568, pp. 182-184; R. Zama, op. cit., p. 21). The son of an Antonio who lived in the Cotignola area, critics assume he completed his apprenticeship in the local workshop of brothers Bernardino and Francesco Zaganelli, which is also logically shared due to his area of origin and a series of stylistic concordances that allow him to be descended from the lesson of these brothers.

This link can also be seen in the first altarpiece documented to him, the Madonna and Child between Saints Apollinare and Christopher, in the eponymous church of Casteldimezzo (Pesaro) dating back to 1509, where, in addition to the lesson of the Zaganellis, he is influenced by the suggestions inspired by Nicolò Rondinelli and Baldassarre Carrari, under the wing of Marco Palmezzano. Although we must wait a couple of years to witness the realisation of a work in which Marchesi begins to channel his more autonomous and personal style, demonstrating that he has reached artistic maturity: this occurs in the Immaculate Conception with Saints Augustine and Anselm, signed and dated 1512, for the Church of San Francesco in San Marino (San Marino, Museo San Francesco; C. Ricci, La pittura a San Marino, in "Rassegna d'arte", I, 1901, pp. 129-132). As with the links with Sforza patronage corresponds the Immaculate Madonna with the Eternal Father in Glory and Saints Augustine, Catherine of Alexandria, Elisabeth (or Anne), Jerome and Costanzo II Sforza, signed and dated 1513 (Milan, Pinacoteca di Brera), executed on the precise commission of Ginevra Tiepolo Sforza for the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Pesaro. In which there are strong hints of Palmezzano as well as Zaganelli.

At the end of 1513, the painter was in Rimini, where on 3 December he signed the contract for the decoration of the main chapel of Santa Colomba, a cathedral destroyed in the earthquake of 1672. The frescoes, which depicted the Coronation of the Virgin with the Apostles and Evangelists, did not satisfy the commissioners, who opened a dispute that was resolved with an arbitration award pronounced on 27 February 1516 and concluded to the disadvantage of the painter, who received less than initially agreed upon. On the occasion of the Rimini dispute, Marchesi availed himself of the testimony of the painter Gerolamo Genga, who was probably collaborating with his colleague at the time on the polyptych for the high altar of the church of Sant'Agostino in Cesena (Scannelli, p. 183). This episode confirms how formal elements derived from Gerolamo Genga's style can be detected in Marchesi's production from the middle of the second decade. The Compianto in Brera (from Santa Maria in Acumine in Rimini), the Madonna Enthroned with Child and Saints Marino, John the Baptist, Francis and Catherine of Alexandria for San Francesco in San Marino (San Marino, Museo San Francesco) and the Sposalizio della Vergine (Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Gemäldegalerie) are all part of this context. In our opinion, the two predella panels with St. Mary Magdalene and St. Philip Benizzi, who stand solitary, shrouded by the impervious surrounding landscape (Avignon, Musée du Petit Palais, inv. no. 20214 and 20215), point well in the direction, or rather centre the solution to the problem. With that same "way of foreshortening the face of the Saint in 'niobide'; and also the similar way of spraying the foliage of the slender trees" (R. Longhi, Saggi in Francia. Italiani a Chambery, 1927, pp. 144-146 also in Saggi e Ricerche 1925-28, Florence, 1962). Such as "demonstrate the stylistic proximity between the Zaganelli (Bernardino in particular) and Marchesi at the time of his debut" (R. Zama, op. cit. 2007, p. 110).  To which is related the Apparition of the Virgin and Child between Saints Francis and Anthony of Padua formerly in New Haven (W.R. Kerr collection) and later Cherbourg (Alliance-Enchères sale, 6 August 2007).

Aspects that involve even more the Madonna and Child Enthroned between Saints Michael, Catherine, Cecilia and Jerome (Houston, Museum of Fine Arts, inv. no. 78.1) in a typology of faces and gazes that recall the present Saint Jerome. All works that integrate that attention to the cultural components that were most up-to-date in his eyes, including the Umbrian Pinturicchio substratum, on which memories of Melozzo da Forlì and Piero della Francesca insist.    Marchesi reveals himself to be the author of diluted accords, including the aforementioned pink dissolved in chiaroscuro, which can be seen in the two panels produced in 1520 on probable indications by Sebastiano Serlio, reproducing city streets, one with a bear in the foreground (Ferrara, Palazzo dei Diamanti) up to the border of the arch that circumscribes the lunette depicting the Anointing of Christ(Lille, Musée des Beaux-Arts) which, due to its delicate harshness, can still be considered to date back to the early years of the second decade. A chromatic timbre that is as rare as it is characterising, we find it present in many of the works of the first phase of his career, the one that precedes the decisive Raphaelesque turn in which Marchesi was involved in the third decade. A relationship that does not exclude the possibility of also seeing signs of comparison in the painter's evolution that took place with the encounter with Raphael's works, as testified by the Christ cured known through the two versions divided by minimal variants, one in Verona in the Museo di Castelvecchio (inv. no. 118) and the other considered lost, known to the writer in a private Swiss collection.