The artist signed the work on the small plaque, or cartellino, in the foreground near the dogs that reads: "VICTOR / CARPATHIVS / FINGEBAT" ("Vittore Carpaccio was forming [this]").

[3] Vittore Carpaccio was commissioned to create a cycle of nine paintings that illustrate four separate narratives stories about the lives of Christ and Saints Jerome, George, and Tryphon.

[1] The painting of St. Augustine in his Study is a part of three canvases that narrate important scenes from the life of St.Jerome (c. 342-420 CE), who was born in Stridon, a province of Dalmatia and one of the Catholic Church Fathers.

[1] This moment that the painting illustrates St. Augustine's seated at his desk raising his pen, while peering out a window from which miraculous light pours, and which was "not seen in our times, and hardly to be described in our poor language.

[2] These studies, also known as kunstkammer, wunderkammer or cabinets of curiosities, were typically used to display collectors items, and became popular in Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

[2] The study is a significant part of the painting's subject, catching the viewer's attention immediately and highlighting St. Augustine as a humanist scholar who was an intelligent, knowledgeable, and pious man.

[6] Numerous books lining the bookshelves display St. Augustine's intelligence, as do various objects around the room such as an astrolabe, figurines, a conch shell, furniture, and other ornaments.

[2] Scholars have argued that the impressive variety of items from the arts, sciences, astronomy, and theology, drawn from different places and historical times, symbolizes the active, intellectual mind of St.