In this series, Index asks our colleagues “What is your favorite work of art in our collections and why?” This is a tall order, given that we have about 250,000 works in our collections. At a recent weekly coffee hour, our intrepid reporters posed the challenging question to unsuspecting staff. Click here to see other responses in this series.

Karoline Mansur, Assistant Registrar, Collections Management

“I got one!… Saint Jerome in His Study by Albrecht Dürer. It’s got this amazing warped perspective, a Renaissance perspective. It has the most amazing detail. I love the gourd hanging in the upper right, how the animals are asleep at his feet, the windows and their reflections, the wood grain in the ceiling… I could go on and on…

“I worked in the study room [the Agnes Mongan Center for the Study of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs] when I first started here and I was always happy to pull this for a visitor. For me, it’s awe inspiring.”