The Church of Sant’Agostino

Crucifixion and Deposition

The next episode, the Crucifixion, was painted around 1502 by Perugino. The canvas, above the second altar on the right in the nave, portrays Jesus in the hour of his death. At the foot of the cross, along with the pious women and Saint John the Baptist, are some Augustinian saints: Monica, Augustine’s mother; Augustine, the patron saint of the order; and Jerome, a Desert Father, whose presence recalls the hermitic origin of the Augustinians. Jerome is also shown in a painting by the baroque artist Astolfo Petrazzi, located on the first altar on the right in the nave.
The Crucifixion was also the theme of the fresco cycle which once decorated the Piccolomini Chapel, of which only the Virgin and Child Enthroned by the Sienese painter Ambrogio Lorenzetti, dated 1338, still survives. The presence of Saint Catherine of Alexandria in Lorenzetti’s painting and in the painting cycle was linked to the mystery of the cross, a favorite subject for the Augustinians. In her dispute with the emperor, she maintained that Christ died on the cross to save mankind from original sin.
Lorenzetti’s picture also includes two Augustinian saints, Anthony Abbot and Augustine, who wears the Augustinian habit underneath his robes of a bishop. He has three books in his hand because, according to tradition, he drew up one rule for the canons and hermits and two for the Augustinian Hermits.
The painting cycle of stories of the Passion concludes with the Deposition of Christ in the Tomb (1610-1615) by Giovanni Paolo Pisani, which is also in the Piccolomini Chapel.