Saint Gregory and Saint Augustine

Juan de Borgoña's Saint Gregory and Saint Augustine, painted around 1510 and now at the Bowes Museum, depicts two of the four Latin Doctors of the Church — Gregory the Great (590–604), who reformed the liturgy and established the authority of the papacy, and Augustine of Hippo, whose theological writings shaped Catholic doctrine. The pairing of Gregory and Augustine, the two greatest administrative and intellectual authorities of early Western Christianity, was theologically and politically resonant in early sixteenth-century Spain, where the Catholic Monarchs and their successors were engaged in ongoing negotiation of church authority. The Bowes Museum in County Durham holds important collections of European decorative and fine arts.

The two Doctors are depicted in full ecclesiastical vestments with their identifying attributes — Gregory with his papal tiara or dove, Augustine with his heart or book. Borgoña's hybrid Franco-Flemish and Italian-influenced style produces dignified, formally composed figures in a shallow devotional space.