Saint Augustin

Piero della Francesca's Saint Augustine, painted around 1454 for the National Museum of Ancient Art in Lisbon, formed part of the Augustinian polyptych from Sansepolcro. Augustine of Hippo, the greatest theologian of the Western Church, was the founder of the Augustinian order that commissioned this altarpiece. Piero della Francesca stands apart from all his contemporaries in the particular quality of his vision: a geometrically ordered world bathed in crystalline light where human figures possess both physical solidity and an uncanny stillness that suggests meditation rather than action.

The bishop-saint is depicted in magnificent episcopal vestments rendered with Piero's crystalline precision, the brocade cope and mitre painted with meticulous geometric patterning of extraordinary decorative richness.