St Jerome and St Augustine

This panel comes from the same Camerino altarpiece as the Madonna now in the Brera, and it pairs two of the Latin Church's great scholars. On the left, Augustine appears as a bishop in full ceremonial robes. On the right stands Jerome, the man who translated the Bible into Latin, in the red hat and cloak of a cardinal, an office that did not exist in his own lifetime and was granted to him in art only centuries later. A lion crouches at his feet, from the tale that he once drew a thorn from its paw, and he holds a small model church, the sign of a Doctor of the Church.