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]
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]