St. Augustine in His Study (Carpaccio)

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.

Preparatory sketch held by the British Museum, in which the dog is substituted with a cat, or perhaps more likely a weasel or ermine [ 5 ]