Saints Augustine and Peter

Paolo Veneziano · c. 1350

Medium

Tempera on panel

Original size

77.4 × 49.5 cm (30 1/2 × 19 1/2 in.); Framed: 101 × 59.7 cm (39 3/4 × 23 1/2 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Medieval

Saints Augustine and Peter presents two of Christianity's most venerated figures with the solemn grandeur that defined devotional painting in medieval Venice. Paolo Veneziano is widely regarded as the founding master of the Venetian school, active in the mid-fourteenth century at a moment when Byzantine formalism was beginning to yield to the softer emotional currents of Gothic painting. Working in tempera on gold-ground panel, he built figures of striking authority — rigid yet luminous, their robes falling in stylised folds that catch and hold the gilded light. His ability to balance hieratic dignity with a quiet human presence set him apart from his contemporaries and established visual conventions that Venetian painters would carry forward for generations. Paolo worked extensively for the Doge of Venice and produced altarpieces that shaped the religious visual culture of the city throughout the trecento — a rare distinction for an artist of that era whose name and biography are even partially known. The hand-painted oil reproduction captures the warmth of the original's gold leaf, the deliberate stillness of the figures, and the deep, jewel-like tones that made Paolo Veneziano's panels objects of both devotion and beauty.