Saint Ambrose

In the 380s a young teacher of rhetoric named Augustine kept calling on the bishop of Milan and often found him reading. Years later he described it in his Confessions. Ambrose's eyes ran over the page while his heart searched out the meaning, his voice silent and his tongue still. Visitors would sit quietly for a long time and then leave rather than disturb him. The Master of Grossgmain shows Ambrose in that state, a bishop in a green cope and jewelled mitre, eyes lowered to a large book on a lectern, one hand lifting a leaf, lips closed. The panel's companion shows Augustine himself. Look at the top corner of the page lying open on the lectern. Among the lines of tiny black and red script, the painter wrote the year, 1498.