Saint Augustin

Piero della Francesca began this in 1454 for the Augustinian church in Sansepolcro, his own small Tuscan hometown, and it took him some 15 years to finish. It was never meant to stand alone. This Saint Augustine, robed as a bishop with scenes from Christ's life painted along his cope, was one wing of a towering altarpiece of many panels set around a central Madonna. Sometime in the 1600s that altarpiece was taken apart and sold off piece by piece. Only eight of its roughly 30 panels are known today, scattered through museums in four countries, and the Madonna from its heart has never been found. This single saint travelled all the way to Lisbon, where he now stands in the national museum of ancient art.