The Saint Teaching Rhetoric.

Niccolò di Pietro's panel depicting a saint teaching rhetoric, dated 1413, is likely part of the same Polyptych of Saint Augustine of Pesaro cycle, since Augustine was specifically associated with rhetoric — he had been a professor of rhetoric before his conversion and wrote extensively about language and persuasion in De Doctrina Christiana. The image of a saint instructing students in a classical discipline represents the humanist synthesis of ancient learning and Christian theology that was central to Augustinian theology, making this an unusually intellectually specific commission.

The composition required solving an unusual pictorial problem: depicting teaching as an activity through static figures without the action verbs available in narrative scenes. Niccolò di Pietro addresses this through the arrangement of student figures in listening postures around the central teacher, their book rolls and tablets signaling the subject, while gesture and relative positioning establish the rhetorical relationship.