St Augustine Teaching in Rome (scene 6, south wall)

St Augustine Teaching in Rome is scene 6 on the south wall of the Sant'Agostino fresco cycle at San Gimignano, painted by Benozzo Gozzoli in 1464. The scene depicts Augustine at the height of his pre-Christian career as a professor of rhetoric in Rome, before he moved to Milan and encountered the transformative preaching of Ambrose. Gozzoli renders the academic setting with the kind of detailed pleasure he brought to all scenes of public life: a formal lecture environment with students ranged before a teacher whose authority is evident in his gesture and position. The scene captures Augustine the brilliant intellectual pagan who would become the greatest theologian of the Western church.

Gozzoli organizes the teaching scene around Augustine's central raised position, from which his gesture radiates outward to the seated students. The students' varied attentive poses — leaning forward, looking up, perhaps disagreeing — give life to what could easily be a static image. The academic interior is rendered with convincing architectural consistency, and the depiction of books and writing materials shows Gozzoli's attention to contemporary scholarly environments.