Saint Augustine

Saint Augustine, the great Church Father and philosopher, appears in this 1426 panel at the Gemaldegalerie in Berlin, another component of the Pisa Altarpiece. Augustine"s dual authority as bishop and theologian is conveyed through his episcopal vestments and the books that indicate his intellectual legacy. Masaccio renders the Father of the Church with the same revolutionary naturalism he brought to all his saints—a specific, individualized human being rather than a conventional type.

The bishop"s vestments provide rich passages of color and texture—the gold embroidery of the cope, the white of the mitre—rendered with Masaccio"s characteristic attention to how light falls on different materials. The face beneath the mitre shows individualized features and an expression of thoughtful authority. The figure"s solid, three-dimensional presence is enhanced by the careful modeling of the heavy vestments, which fall with convincing weight and structure.