Landscape with St Augustine.

Oil on panel, 21 x 16,2 cm, unsigned (several losses of paint near bottom of large rock, bishop's head and near the castle with support visible, rectangular drying cracks throughout lower section).

Under 20th-c. sextagonal frame with gilding.

Landscape in the tradition of Joachim Patinir with Italianesque rocks; divided into three depth planes ranging from a brown foreground, a green middle plane and a light blue or white background. Situated at the top of the rock is an idyllic castle. In the left foreground St. Augustine with a crozier and a bishop's hat can be discerned reading a book. At his feet a child is seated. The painting relates the story that St. Augustine was walking on the beach contemplating the mystery of the Trinity. Then he saw a boy in front of him who had dug a hole in the sand and was going out to the sea again and again and bringing some water to pour into the hole. St. Augustine asked him, “What are you doing?” “I’m going to pour the entire ocean into this hole.” “That is impossible, the whole ocean will not fit in the hole you have made” said St. Augustine. The boy replied, “And you cannot fit the Trinity in your tiny little brain.” The story concludes by saying that the boy vanished because St. Augustine had been talking to an angel. The scene is a parable of the unbridgeable gap between faith and reason.