San Agustín

In February 1426 a Pisan notary named Giuliano di Colino commissioned Masaccio to paint a large altarpiece for his chapel in the Carmelite church at Pisa. This small panel of Saint Augustine, only about 38 centimetres tall, was one of its many parts. In the 18th century the altarpiece was taken apart and its pieces scattered across Europe; today they sit in Berlin, London, Naples, Pisa and Vienna, and scholars have pieced the whole back together mainly from a description the painter Vasari wrote in 1568. Masaccio was among the first to give his figures real weight and to light them as if from a single fixed source. He was in his mid-20s when he took the commission, and dead within about two years.