Sant'Agostino

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For the Italian city, see Sant'Agostino, Ferrara.

Sant'Agostino is a church in Rome, not far from Piazza Navona. It is one of the first Roman churches built during the Renaissance. The construction was funded by Guillaume d'Estouteville, Archbishop of Rouen and Papal Chancellor. The facade was built up in 1483 by Giacomo di Pietrasanta, using marble taken from Colosseum. It is a fine, plain work of the early Renaissance style.

The most famous work of art presently in the church is the Madonna di Loreto, a Baroque masterwork by Caravaggio. The church also contains a Guercino canvas of Saints Augustine, John the Evangelist and Hyeronimus; a fresco of Prophet Isaiah by Raphael; and the statues of Madonna col Bambino, by Andrea Sansovino and of Madonna del Parto by his pupil, Jacopo Sansovino. The latter statue is reputed by tradition to convey miracles. This statue, according to a legend, was made adapting an ancient statue of Agrippina keeping Nero in her arms. Early in his career, the baroque 17th-century artist Giovanni Lanfranco frescoed the ceiling of the Buongiovanni Chapel in the left transept with an Assumption. It also houses Melchiore Caffa's sculpture St Thomas of Villanova distributing alms, completed by his mentor Ercole Ferrata. Pietro Bracci also designed and sculpted the polychromatic tomb of Cardinal Giuseppe Renato Imperiali (1741).

The church was once noted for the presence of a number of courtesans and prostitutes in its congregation.

The church houses the tomb of Santa Monica, mother of St. Augustine, and that of Fiammetta, lover of Cesare Borgia and famous cortigiana.

The Titulus S. Augustini is currently vacant. The last Cardinal Priest of Sant'Agostino was Marcelo Cardinal González Martín, deceased in 2004.