The middle register shows his path to Christian faith:
(8) Arrival of St Augustine in Milan, (9) Scenes with St Ambroise, (10) St Augustine Reading the Epistle of St Paul, (11) Baptism of St Augustine, (12) The Parable of the Holy Trinity, (13) Death of St Monica.

Finally, in the lunette fields the culmination of his journey through life appears.
(14) Blessing of the Faithful at Hippo, (15) Conversion of the Heretic, (16) St Augustine's Vision of St Jerome, (17) Funeral of St Augustine.

Here, as in Montefalco, the cycle is read from the bottom upwards, and as a result should be interpreted as a painted metaphor of a striving to reach God.

(1) The School of Tagaste

(2) St Augustine at the University of Carthage,

(3) St Augustine Leaving his Mother,

(4) St Augustine's Journey to Rome,

(5) Disembarkation at Ostia,

(6) St Augustine Teaching in Rome,

(7) St Augustine Departing for Milan.

The middle register shows his path to Christian faith:

(8) Arrival of St Augustine in Milan,

(9) Scenes with St Ambroise,

(10) St Augustine Reading the Epistle of St Paul,

(11) Baptism of St Augustine,

(12) The Parable of the Holy Trinity,

(13) Death of St Monica.

Finally, in the lunette fields the culmination of his journey through life appears.

(14) Blessing of the Faithful at Hippo,

(15) Conversion of the Heretic,

(16) St Augustine's Vision of St Jerome,

(17) Funeral of St Augustine.

(18) Frescoes of saints on the pillars

(19) The vaulting shows the four Evangelistson concentrically painted clouds.

Here, as in Montefalco, the cycle is read from the bottom upwards, and as a result should be interpreted as a painted metaphor of a striving to reach God. The vaulting shows the four Evangelists on concentrically painted clouds, creating the impression of a circular vault.
As in the cycle of St Francis in Montefalco, the cycle of St Augustine does not depict any miracles or posthumous events, but portrays the saint as a student, teacher and scholar. This corresponded to the new humanist opinion of the Father of the Church, who combined classical learning, a high regard for Plato and the art of rhetoric with the religious zeal of Christianity. St Augustine was born in 354 in Tagaste (Numidia, now Algeria), the son of Patricius, a pagan, and the Christian Monica. The father did not have any decisive influence on him, though that of the mother was to prove to be a lasting one.

On the right edge of the fresco St Augustine Departing for Milan, the painter has immortalized himself in a light red garment.

In this picture it is particularly clear how Benozzo, in contrast to his earlier fresco cycles, chose a close-up composition for his frescoes, particularly in the lower register. This makes it possible for the figures in the foreground to appear as if on a stage. In contrast to the real events, though, Benozzo moved to scene to a typically Tuscan hilly landscape.

In the Arrival of St Augustine in Milan, Benozzo once again combines three scenes from the legend of St Augustine as simultaneous events. On the first occasion St Augustine appears before the columned loggia and a servant is helping him take off his riding clothes. In the background, the saint is kneeling before a Muslim scholar. In the foreground on the right we can see St Augustine being greeted by St Ambrose.

The Baptism of St Augustine was, according to the "Legenda Aurea" or Golden Legend, carried out at Easter 378 by St Ambrose in Milan with the words "te Deum laudamus" (we praise you as [our] God), to which St Augustine replied "te Dominum confitemur" (we recognize your as [our] Lord). This liturgical hymn of thanksgiving, the "Te Deum", is mentioned in the "Legenda Aurea" as being a song of praise between St Ambrose and St Augustine. In the medieval liturgy, the "Te Deum" was sung as the conclusion of Matins the midnight office, and on ceremonial liturgical occasions. The melody is one of the oldest Gregorian chants. The architecture of the baptistery, with an individual pilaster for each of the figures in the picture, emphasizes the religious dignity of the event.

Not until 1256 did Pope Alexander (1254-1261) found the order of Augustinian hermits by combining several Italian groups of hermits who had been living according to the rule of St Augustine since 1243.

This picture field shows the praying St Monica on her deathbed. Above, St Monica appears in a small glory of angels in which her soul is being carried up to heaven. In the background on the right one can, through an open colonnade, see the departure of St Augustine for Numidia.

In a perspectively constructed church interior St Augustine is blessing the faithful of Hippo kneeling on the left side. On the severely damaged right side, he can still be recognized by his bishop's miter. The church interior contains numerous references to known works of art from the Early Renaissance. For example, on the door lunette on the left edge of the picture there is a terracotta group in the style of Luca della Robbia.

The loggia behind the mourners is a quotation of the Ospedale degli Innocenti (orphanage) which Filippo Brunelleschi started building in Florence in 1419. The orphanage, which is situated in the vicinity of the monastery of San Marco, would certainly have been known by Benozzo, for the innovative columned architecture that the building used soon spread right across Europe. It is all the more astonishing, however, that in this picture pillars instead of columns are supporting the arches, in keeping with a requirement in Leon Battista Alberti's famous treatise "De Re Aedificatoria" (On Architecture), written in 1451.

The four Evangelists

The progress shown in this picture in the naturalistic movement, in the direction pointed out by Fra Filippo, is most remarkable. The landscape is still purely subjective and devoid of the qualities of outdoor work; but there appears a most noteworthy distinction of specific character in the trees, the evergreen and deciduous pines and cypresses especially being recalled with landscape feeling, and the foreground plants being done in the sentiment of a lover of nature. Though recorded as the pupil of Fra Angelico,—and so far as the processes of his art may be concerned he may have been so, as Fra Angelico was an admirable master of the fresco and tempera processes,—in the spirit of his work, his intellectual and artistic tendencies, Benozzo is the son and heir of Fra Filippo, and his successor in the line which Masaccio had pointed out and the Frate had walked in. There is not only the recognition of the individual type in all his personages, but there is the distinct and undeniable indication of the use of the model through drawings made for all the figures in his compositions. There is no advance towards realism, but a complete abandonment of the visionary and ecstatic type so marked in Fra Angelico. We come down to plain flesh and blood, and every personage in this long procession has posed for the drawing made for it. It is the most extraordinary agglomeration of pose-plastique in all the range of the Renaissance; and in the densest part of the crowd, and no matter what his action, every actor turns his face more or less so as to be seen and recognized by those who know him. There is no mistaking that for every one of these heads and all the principal figures careful drawings must have been made from life. Every figure says, "I am being drawn by Benozzo for his great picture of the Magi." It is such a collection of unquestionable portraits as I do not know elsewhere in the world.

The groups of worshiping angels at the right and left of the altar are exquisite testimonials of the influence of Fra Angelico, and their loveliness is rendered by Mr. Cole’s selection, as the manner of portraiture is by the head from the crowd at the end of the proces sion which Benozzo marked as his own. One sees that it is caught from life, but in the way that a sculptor would have studied it, for pure form and character.

In color the work has neither the gaiety of Fra Angelico nor the elementary harmony of Fra Filippo; nor has it, from the very nature of the subject,—being a long procession trailing around the room,— the majesty of composition that he had learned from Masaccio. It is a work in all its qualities sui generis. The exclusion of light and weather from it has preserved this great work so completely that we probably see it much as it was when finished.

Gozzoli’s frescos in the Campo Santo of Pisa are more deliberately planned and are works of a higher order; but unfortunately, owing to their exposed position and the want of care in times past, they are comparative wrecks, and keep the record, not of their achievement, but of their intention. Here we recognize the influence of Masaccio in the studied and masterly composition, in which the "Noah," the first painted of the series of Bible histories which were his themes,—and which it is said he painted to show his hand,—is one of the most admirable examples in the range of Italian art, a classic for all the subsequent generations of painters.

In all we have of Benozzo’s work there is a cheerful sense of the influences of nature, and a love for children and animals such as we have not before him; and in his painting of children he seems especially happy. In his Campo Santo series he introduces them on every convenient occasion. The individuality of his heads, and even the character of his figures, have that air of unmistakable likeness which belongs to earnest portraiture, and to a degree not indicated in any previous Italian work or in any contemporary prior to Giovanni Bellini, who was eight years the junior of Benozzo.

For the next eight years the artist seems to have been in Florence and its vicinity painting innumerable panels and frescos. For the Company of S. Zenobius he executed a panel; in the church of S. Agostino in San Gimignano a "St. Sebastian delivering the Land from Pestilence," seventeen frescos from the life of St. Agostino, and in the same town a fresco of the martyrdom of St. Sebastian. In 1464 he was enrolled among the doctors and apothecaries of Florence. In 1466 he restored some frescos of Lippo Memmi in the town-hall of San Gimignano and painted various panels for churches in and near that town.

In 1468 Benozzo went to Pisa for the great series of frescos there and worked for sixteen years, but probably not continuously; and there is a popular tradition that he took only two years over the whole. There were twenty-four in number, and most of them are well enough preserved to follow the intention of the painter; two or three are defaced almost entirely. Vasari speaks most highly of them, though they were not of the taste of his time, and he mentions an ass in the sacrifice of Abraham which was very cleverly foreshortened. In recognition of his skill the Pisans placed an inscription of flattering purport in the midst of his work and gave him a place in the Campo Santo for his grave. As in the procession of the Magi, he introduced in these frescos many portraits, of which Vasari mentions those of Marsilio Ficino, Argiropoulo the Greek scholar, and the artist’s own figure on horseback. In Pisa, Benozzo also painted many other frescos and panels, which have disappeared for the most part. One panel, which Vasari considered the best the painter had executed, and which was in the Duomo, a St. Thomas Aquinas disputing with many learned men over his works, is now in the Louvre.

Benozzo was sixty-one when he finished his great task in the Campo Santo. Of the last seventeen years of his life we know very little. In 1484 he was at work on a tabernacle at a place not far from Castel Fiorentino, and in 1497 he is recorded as being called on with other artists to give judgment on the works of Baldovinetti in the Gianfigliazzi Chapel, and in the next year he died, "to the great sorrow of the whole city," as Vasari says, and as one can well imagine; and we are told that during his residence there he had built himself a house which he bequeathed to one of his daughters, and that he had lived a godly and industrious life and was long remembered in the city. The following epitaph was engraved on his tomb:

Hic tumulus est Benotii Florentini quif proxime has pinxit historias
Hunc sibi Pisanorum donavit humanitas MCCCCXCVIII.

From Wikisource, Century Magazine by W. J. Stillman, Volume 39, Issue 1 (November, 1889), Old Italian Masters. Benozzo Gozzoli