This is one of a number of busts of St Jerome derived from sculptures by Andrea del Verrocchio (1435-1488), this one thought to be made by a sculptor from the circle of Giovanni Rustici (1474-1554). The biographer and painter Georgio Vasari (1511-1574), records that Verrocchio made a bust of St Jerome but this work has not been identified. Verrocchio's pupils, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) and Rustici have both been associated with these busts.
St Jerome was a Roman Catholic priest, who is well known for having translated the Vulgate, an early 5th century version of the bible in Latin.
In art he appears often as one of the four Latin doctors of the church (the others being Augustine of Hippo, Ambrose and Pope Gregory I ) and is often represented in the costume of a cardinal.
Rustici is best known for his bronze group of the Preaching of the Baptist over the north door of the Baptistry in Florence (commissioned 1506; exhibited 1511). There is a tradition that during work on this group he was advised by Leonardo da Vinci, whose influence is reflected in a number of small terracotta groups of fighting horsemen and figures in the Museo Nazionale, Florence, and elsewhere. Rustici was also responsible for a series of terracotta roundels with mythological scenes in the Villa Salviati, Florence. About 1527-8 he left Florence for France, where he worked for the remainder of his life.