According the Institute: In the 16th century, the port city of Antwerp was a center of the growing international trade in art; its artists began to produce paintings for collectors in addition to traditional images for devotional use. One new painting type was the independent landscape, an outgrowth of the lovely, naturalistic backgrounds that were one of the most admired aspects of Flemish religious paintings. Usually a diminutive religious subject occupied the foreground of these landscapes, providing an organizing principle for the panoramic view that was the picture’s main subject. Here Saint Jerome beats his breast in repentance for his earlier worldly pursuits; the lion he befriended sits nearby.