Sacred and legendary art, volume 1 (of 2) / Containing legends of the angels and archangels, the evangelists, the Apostles, the doctors of the church, and St. Mary magdalene, as represented in the fine arts.

by Mrs. Jameson

St. Augustine.

St. Austin. Lat. Sanctus Augustinus. Ital. Sant’ Agostino. Fr. St. Augustin. (Aug. 28, A.D. 430.)

St. Augustine, the third of the Doctors of the Church, was born at Tagaste, in Numidia, in 354. His father was a heathen; his mother, Monica, a Christian. Endowed with splendid talents, a vivid imagination, and strong passions, Augustine passed his restless youth in dissipated pleasures, in desultory studies, changing from one faith to another, dissatisfied with himself and unsettled in mind. His mother, Monica, wept and prayed for him, and, in the extremity of her anguish, repaired to the bishop of Carthage. After listening to her sorrows, he dismissed her with these words: ‘Go in peace; the son of so many tears will not perish!’ Augustine soon afterwards went to Rome, where he gained fame and riches by his eloquence at the bar; but he was still unhappy and restless, nowhere finding peace either in labour or in pleasure. From Rome he went to Milan; there, after listening for some time to the preaching of Ambrose, he was, after many struggles, converted to the faith, and was baptized by the bishop of Milan, in presence of his mother, Monica. On this occasion was composed the hymn called the ‘Te Deum,’ still in use in our Church; St. Ambrose and St. Augustine reciting the verses alternately as they advanced to the altar. Augustine, after some time spent in study, was ordained priest, and then bishop of Hippo, a small town and territory not far from Carthage. Once installed in his bishopric, he ever afterwards refused to leave the flock intrusted to his care, or to accept of any higher dignity. His life was passed in the practice of every virtue: all that he possessed was spent in hospitality and charity, and his time was devoted to the instruction of his flock, either by preaching or writing. In 430, after he had presided over his diocese for thirty-five years, the city of Hippo was besieged by the Vandals; in the midst of the horrors that ensued, Augustine refused to leave his people, and died during the siege, being then in his seventy-sixth year. It is said that his remains were afterwards removed from Africa to Pavia, by Luitprand, king of the Lombards. His writings in defence of Christianity are numerous and celebrated; and he is regarded as the patron saint of theologians and learned men.

Of his glorious tomb, in the Cathedral of Pavia, I can only say that its beauty as a work of art astonished me. I had not been prepared for anything so rich, so elegant in taste, and so elaborate in invention. It is of the finest florid Gothic, worked in white marble, scarcely discoloured by time. Augustine lies upon a bier, and angels of exquisite grace are folding his shroud around him. The basso-relievos represent the events of his life; the statues of the evangelists, apostles, and other saints connected with the history of the Church, are full of dignity and character. It comprises in all 290 figures. This magnificent shrine is attributed by Cicognara to the Jacobelli of Venice, and by Vasari to the two brothers Agostino and Agnolo of Siena; but he does not speak with certainty, and the date 1362 seems to justify the supposition of Cicognara, the Sienese brothers being then eighty or ninety years old.

Single figures of St. Augustine are not common; and when grouped with others in devotional pictures, it is not easy to distinguish him from other bishops; for his proper attribute, the heart flaming or transpierced, to express the ardour of his piety or the poignancy of his repentance, is very seldom introduced: but when a bishop is standing with a book in his hand, or a pen, accompanied by St. Jerome, and with no particular attribute, we may suppose it to be St. Augustine; and when the title of one of his famous writings is inscribed on the book, it of course fixes the identity beyond a doubt.

1. B. Vivarini. St. Augustine seated on a throne, as patron saint, mitred and robed; alone, stern, and majestic.[272]

2. Dosso Dossi. St. Augustine throned as patron, attended by two angels; he looks like a jovial patriarch.[273]

3. F. Filippo Lippi. St. Augustine writing in his chamber; no emblem, no mitre; yet the personalité so marked, that one could not mistake him either for Ambrose or Jerome.[274]

4. Andrea del Sarto. St. Augustine as doctor; before him stand St. Dominic and St. Peter Martyr; beside him St. Laurence, listening; in front kneel St. Sebastian and Mary Magdalen.[275]

5. V. Carpaccio. St. Augustine standing; a fine, stern, majestic figure; he holds his book and scourge.[276]

6. Paris Bordone. The Virgin and Child enthroned; the Virgin places on the head of St. Augustine, who kneels before her, the jewelled mitre.[277]

7. Florigerio. St. Augustine, as bishop, and St. Monica, veiled, stand on each side of the Madonna.[278]

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As a series of subjects, the history of St. Augustine is not commonly met with; yet certain events in his life are of very frequent occurrence.

I shall begin with the earliest.

1. Monica brings her son to school; the master receives him; the scholars are sitting in a row conning their hornbooks. The names of Monica and Augustine are inscribed in the glories round their heads. This is a very curious little oval picture of the early part of the fourteenth century.[279]

Benozzo Gozzoli has painted the same subject in a large fresco in the church of San Geminiano at Volterra (A.D. 1460). Monica presents her son to the schoolmaster, who caresses him; in the background a little boy is being whipped, precisely in the same attitude in which correction is administered to this day in some of our schools.

2. St. Augustine under the fig-tree meditating, with the inscription, ‘Dolores animæ salutem parturientes;’ and the same subject varied, with the inscription, Tolle, lege. He tells us in his Confessions, that while still unconverted and in deep communion with his friend Alypius on the subject of the Scriptures, the contest within his mind was such that he rushed from the presence of his friend and threw himself down beneath a fig-tree, pouring forth torrents of repentant tears; and he heard a voice, as it were the voice of a child, repeating several times, ‘Tolle, lege,’ ‘Take and read;’ and returning to the place where he had left his friend, and taking up the sacred volume, he opened it at the verse of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, ‘Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh.’ Considering that this was the voice of God, he took up the religious profession, to the great joy of his mother and his friend.

3. C. Procaccino. The Baptism of St. Augustine in the presence of St. Monica. This is a common subject in chapels dedicated to St. Augustine or St. Monica.[280]

4. As the supposed founder of one of the four great religious communities, St. Augustine is sometimes represented as giving the rules to his Order: or in the act of writing them, while his monks stand around, as in a picture by Carletto Cagliari:[281] both are common subjects in the houses of the Augustine friars. The habit is black.[282]

5. St. Augustine dispensing alms, generally in a black habit, and with a bishop’s mitre on his head.

6. St. Augustine, washing the feet of the pilgrims, sees Christ descend from above to have his feet washed with the rest; a large picture in the Bologna Academy by Desubleo, a painter whose works, with this one exception, are unknown to me. The saint wears the black habit of an Augustine friar, and is attended by a monk with a napkin in his hand. I found the same subject in the Louvre, in a Spanish picture of the seventeenth century; above is seen a church (like the Pantheon) in a glory, and Christ is supposed to utter the words, ‘Tibi commendo Ecclesiam meam.’[283]

7. St. Augustine, borne aloft by angels in an ecstatic vision, beholds Christ in the opening heavens above, St. Monica kneeling below. This fine picture, by Vandyck, is or was in the gallery of Lord Methuen at Corsham: and at Madrid there is another example, by Murillo: St. Augustine kneeling in an ecstasy sees a celestial vision; on one hand the Saviour crucified, on the other the Virgin and angels.

[89] The Vision of St. Augustine (Murillo)

This, however, is not the famous subject called, in general, 8. ‘The Vision of St. Augustine,’ which represents a dream or vision related by himself. He tells us that while busied in writing his Discourse on the Trinity, he wandered along the sea-shore lost in meditation. Suddenly he beheld a child, who, having dug a hole in the sand, appeared to be bringing water from the sea to fill it. Augustine inquired what was the object of his task? He replied, that he intended to empty into this cavity all the waters of the great deep. ‘Impossible!’ exclaimed Augustine. ‘Not more impossible,’ replied the child, ‘than for thee, O Augustine! to explain the mystery on which thou art now meditating.’

No subject from the history of St. Augustine has been so often treated, yet I do not remember any very early example. It was adopted as a favourite theme when Art became rather theological than religious, and more intent on illustrating the dogmas of churchmen than the teaching of Christ. During the 16th and 17th centuries we find it everywhere, and treated in every variety of style; but the motif does not vary, and the same fault prevails too generally, of giving us a material fact, rather than a spiritual vision or revelation. Augustine, arrayed in his black habit or his episcopal robes, stands on the sea-shore, gazing with an astonished air on the Infant Christ, who pauses, and looks up from his task, holding a bowl, a cup, a ladle, or a shell in his hand. Thus we have it in Murillo’s picture—the most beautiful example I have seen: the child is heavenly, but not visionary, ‘palpable to feeling as to sense.’

In Garofalo’s picture of this subject, now in our National Gallery, Augustine is seated on a rock by the margin of the sea, habited in his episcopal robes, and with his books and writing implements near him; and while he gazes on the mysterious child, the Virgin appears amid a choir of angels above: behind Augustine stands St. Catherine, the patron saint of theologians and scholars: the little red figure in the background represents St. Stephen, whose life and actions are eloquently set forth in the homilies of St. Augustine: the introduction of St. Catherine, St. Stephen, and the whole court of heaven, gives the picture a visionary character. Rubens has painted this subject with all his powerful reality: here Augustine wears the black habit of his Order. Vandyck in his large grand picture has introduced St. Monica kneeling, thus giving at once the devotional or visionary character.[284] Albert Dürer has designed and engraved the same subject. The most singular treatment is the classical composition of Raphael, in one of the small chiaro-scuro pictures placed significantly under the ‘Dispute of the Sacrament.’ St. Augustine is in a Roman dress, bare-beaded, and on horseback; his horse starts and rears at the sight of the miraculous child.

There is something at once picturesque and mystical in this subject, which has rendered it a favourite with artists and theologians; yet there is always, at least in every instance I can recollect, something prosaic and literal in the treatment which spoils the poetry of the conception.

9. ‘St. Augustine and St. Stephen bury ‘Count Orgaz’—the masterpiece of Domenico el Greco, once in the Cathedral of Toledo, now in the Madrid Gallery. This Conde de Orgaz, as Mr. Ford tells us in his Handbook, lived in 1312, and had repaired a church in his lifetime, and therefore St. Stephen and St. Augustine came down from heaven to lay him in his tomb, in presence of Christ, the Virgin, and all the court of heaven. ‘The black and gold armour of the dead Count is equal to Titian; the red brocades and copes of the saints are admirable; less good are the Virgin and celestial groups. I have before mentioned the reason why St. Augustine and St. Stephen are often represented in companionship.

St. Monica is often introduced into pictures of her son, where she has, of course, the secondary place; her dress is usually a black robe, and a veil or coif, white or grey, resembling that of a nun or a widow. I have met with but one picture where she is supreme; it is in the Carmine at Florence. St. Monica is seated on a throne and attended by twelve holy women or female saints, six on each side. The very dark situation of this picture prevented me from distinguishing individually the saints around her, but Monica herself as well as the other figures have that grandiose air which belongs to the painter—Filippo Lippi.

I saw in the atelier of the painter Ary Scheffer, in 1845, an admirable picture of St. Augustine and his mother Monica. The two figures, not quite full length, are seated; she holds his hand in both hers, looking up to heaven with an expression of enthusiastic undoubting faith;— ‘the son of so many tears cannot be cast away!’ He also is looking up with an ardent, eager, but anxious, doubtful expression, which seems to say, ‘Help thou my unbelief!’ For profound and truthful feeling and significance, I know few things in the compass of modern Art that can be compared to this picture.[285]