(active in Piacenza, 1387–1421)
Saint Augustine,
tempera on panel, gold ground, 58.5 x 41.2 cm, unframed

Provenance
L. Donath collection, Prague;
Private European collection

Literature:
F. Todini, Una ‘Madonna dell’Umiltà’ di Niccolò di Pietro, in: Arte all’incanto. Mercato e prezzi dell’arte e dell’antiquariato alle Aste Finarte 1985/86, Milan 1986, pag. 13-14 (as Nicolò di Pietro);
A. De Marchi, Per un riesame della pittura tardogotica a Venezia. Nicolò di Pietro e il suo contesto adriatico, in: Bollettino d’arte, 6. Ser. 72.1987, 44/45, pp. 25–66 [pag. 57];
A. De Marchi, Gentile da Fabriano. Un viaggio nella pittura italiana alla fine del gotico, Milan, 1992, p. 44, n. 94;
L. Gorni, Antonius de Carro pinxit. Documenti e proposte per la pittura tardogotica piacentina, in: Arte Cristiana, N.S. 83.1995, pp. 415–430, fig. 5; L. Bellingeri, Cremona e il gotico perduto, Il caso di Sant’Agostino, in: Prospettiva, N. 83-84, 1996, p. 151, fig. 12;
P. C. Lavagetto and A. Gigli (eds.), Il Gotico a Piacenza, Maestri e botteghe tra Emila e Lombardia, Milan 1998, p. 109

The present painting shows a bearded man enthroned against a backdrop of gold ground. His bishop’s mitre and white-lined black garment of a hermit suggest that he should be identified as Saint Augustine. However, the book at the lower margin is opened to a text passage that cannot be associated with Augustine’s literary work. The bottom line, which unfortunately is not legible in its entirety, seems to mention the source of the passage in question.

With the approval of Miklós Boskovits, Laura Gorni attributed the composition to Antonio de Carro, a painter from Piacenza. De Carro rose from anonymity in 1977, when Linckelmann-Piérès, based on a signed and dated polyptych from 1398 in the Abbey of Santa Franca in Piacenza (now in Paris, Musée des Arts décoratifs), was the first to compile the artist’s oeuvre (see F. Linckelmann-Piérès, Un peintre du Trecento identifié. Le retable d’Antinio de Carro, in: Revue du Louvre, 27.1977, pp. 131–136).

Mauro Lucco has confirmed the attribution of the present painting to De Carro, pointing out the resemblance of the embossed gold ground and of the colours and ornaments of the cloth of honour held up by two angels behind the Saint to the polyptych in Paris. The two works are also stylistically related, and the face of the angel on the right-hand side of the present Augustine panel can be compared to that of the Christ Child in the central panel of the Paris polyptych. The present painting also attests to the painter’s characteristic predilection for bright and transparent colours, which he combined with vermillion and blue. The painting is therefore an important work within Carro’s œuvre.