Visione di sant’Agostino (1636)

Guercino (1591-1666)

Visione di sant’Agostino (Saint Augustine meditating on the Trinity)
1636
Oil on canvas, 185 x 166 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

According to this saint’s story, he was walking along the seaside meditating about the mystery of the Holy Trinity when he saw a boy filling a hole in the sand with seawater. Saint Augustine asked what he was doing and the boy answered that he was trying to empty the sea by pouring all its water into that hole. Upon hearing his answer, the saint said that that was impossible. The boy´s answer was that, if what he was doing was impossible, it was even less possible to try to understand the mystery of the Holy Trinity. Guercino presents the protagonists in a scene that differs slightly from the original story. The saint, wearing an Episcopal Miter alluding to his post as Bishop of Hipona, writes at the seaside while the child instructs him, pointing to the hole in the sand. This work was painted for a Neapolitan Abbot named Peretti and appears in the 1746 inventory of the collection of Isabel de Farnesio (1692-1766) at the La Granja Palace of San Ildefonso. In 1794 it was the the Palace of Aranjuez and in 1814 in Madrid‘s Royal Palace. (MNP)