Saint Augustine

Augustine died in 430, and no one in his world wore glasses. Spectacles appeared in northern Italy late in the 13th century. In 1306 a Dominican preacher in Florence told his listeners that the craft of making them was not yet 20 years old. By 1498, when this panel was painted, they had become a familiar sign of the reader and the scholar, and painters sometimes gave them to learned saints. Here a pair of round lenses sits on the bishop's nose while he holds up a green-bound book, with another lying open on the lectern beside him. He wears a jewelled mitre and a cope of deep green over pink robes, and sits on a wooden chest softened by a red cushion. On the shelf above, more books lie stacked on their sides.