St. Augustine appears in the center with the motif of his encounter with the child at the seashore. He is dressed in full Episcopal robes and kneels on a green hill with a body of water flanked by mountains in the distance. Above to the left is a vision of Christ on the Cross, and on the right, the Virgin Mary. At the same level of the saint, to the right, is a desk with several books and writing implements. Slippers are on the floor in front of the desk. The surrounding architecture houses the Virgin and Child on the left and St. John the Evangelist on the right. Above the red architrave with its central boss of a cupid's head is a scene of John the Baptist in a wooded landscape preaching to a crowd. Cupids holding green cloths sit on the flanking architecture, At the bottom of the panel, a cartouche with scroll work holds an inscription. To the right of it is the donor’s coat of arms and to the left an angel with green robes and yellow wings.

The panel was made for the pilgrimage chapel of St. Jost (St. Jodoc) in Galgenen (Schwyz). In addition to its importance as a pilgrimage site, the chapel became associated with a revered layman, Niklaus von Flüe (Brother Klaus, 1417–1487) now cited as the patron saint of Switzerland. Niklaus was a respected and wealthy farmer who, after siring ten children, took up the life of a hermit and ultimately became a spiritual advisor. In 1622–1623, the dates of the window, the chapel was reconstructed in a Baroque style, although it conserved part of the earlier Gothic wall painting.
The restoration of the pilgrimage chapel of St. Jost included the donation of nine panels of heraldic glass between 1622 and 1624 (Jörger, 1978, pp. 36–48). The names of the donors are listed in a Galgenen register of 1653. In 1835 the panels were sold (Jörger, 1978, p. 125). This panel, with four others appeared in the 1843 sale of the Didier Petit collection from Lyon. Two from the sale are now in Princeton (y1961–54 and y1961–55). Another panel, showing the Virgin on the Crescent with images of John the Baptist and St. Margaret was acquired in 1978 by the March-Museum Vorderthal, Schwyz (Jörger, 1978, fig. 1). Photographs in the National Museum in Zurich identify two others. In a private collection in Lucerne, a panel dated 1623, shows St. Giles and St. Margaret flanking the image of angels transporting the Holy House where Mary lived to Loreto (Jörger, 1978, fig. 3). Another, now in the collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford Connecticut, shows the Virgin holding the body of the dead Christ at the foot of the cross, flanked by saints John the Baptist and John the Evangelist; Jörger, 1978, fig. 4). The Parish archives in Galgenen possesses fragments of an additional window which was discovered under the pews in 1943 (Uta Bergmann).

Uta Bergmann has researched the long history of the glaziers of the city of Zug (Bergmann, 2004, pp. 64–133). The family relevant to this panel began with Michael II Müller (ca. 1570–1642) son of the official Paul Müller (died 1611) who was the first glazier in Zug to leave an extensive record in the city archives and for whom signed panels remain. Michael Müller II was one of the glass painters who, following the death of Franz Fallenter, fabricated many of the panels in the Cloister of Rathausen. Tobias Müller was the oldest son of Michael Müller II (Bergmann, 2004, pp. 95–97). Bergmann has suggested a number of panels from the Müller circle that could be the work of Tobias or his younger brother Paul. A panel of the Crucifixion with the Virgin and St. John dated to 1629 shows similar coloration, and distinctive bunched folds in the Virgin’s mantel as those forming the mantels of the Virgin and God the Father in the Princeton work (Cham, private collection; Bergmann, 2004, p. 297).

The panel describes an explicitly Catholic confession. The Virgin is presented as Queen of Heaven holding her divine Child. St. John is identified by his emblem of the cup and serpent, referring to the legend of his banishing poison from a cup by converting the venom into a serpent. Both the representations of the Evangelist and the Baptist in the scene of his preaching, honor the names saints of the donor, Johannes Hutz. The image of a kneeling saint receiving effusions of the Redeemer’s blood and the Virgin’s milk stems from the writing of St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153). The luminary of the Cistercian movement, Bernard was commonly depicted mediating on the sufferings of Christ, even embracing Christ hanging on the Cross. He was often shown in an image called the Lactation, when, in response to Bernard’s prayer before a statue, Monstra te esse matrem (Show yourself a mother) he is blessed with a stream of the Virgin’s milk (See the words inscribed above the Virgin’s head in Saint Bernard’s Vision of the Virgin and Child, Simon Marmion, c. 1475–1480, J. Paul Getty Museum, Ms 32, recto; Miniature from a Prayer Book or a Book of Hours (Getty Museum). The passage of Bernard’s that forms the inscription in the Princeton panel, however, he presents as a quote from St. Augustine (354– 430), the revered North African Doctor of the Church: Quae communiter Augustino tribui solent: Hinc pascor a vulnere; hinc lactor ab ubere. Positus in medio, quo me vertam nescio (Bernard of Clairvaux, Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Latina, vol. 185, p. 878, section 492). Placed between Christ’s wound and Mary’s breast, Augustine cannot decide where to turn first for spiritual nourishment. Two windows in the Cloister of Wettingen (Aargau) show the imagery of the effusions from Christ and the Virgin, associated with Bernard, not Augustine. A window given by a member of the Wettingen community, Johannes of Sur in 1518, shows Mary and Christ in large scale flanking God the Father who holds the sword of judgement (North IVa; Hoegger, 2003, pp. 113, 252–53). The window replicates a composition of Hans Holbein the Elder from a votive painting of 1508 given by the Schwartz family (Augsburg, Städische Kunstsammlungen; Hoegger, 2003, p. 253, fig. 99;). A later window, probably dated 1627, was given by Bernard von Ägeri, a priest of the church of St. Martin in Rohrdorf in the district of Baden (West Ib; Hoegger, 2003, pp. 113, 302–304). In this window St. Bernard is seen holding the Arma Christi and above, the Crucified Christ is on the left and the Virgin Clothed with the Sun on the right. Both are set in aureoles of light with inscription bands that read Hinc pascor a vulnere and hinc lactor ab ubere.

The Princeton panel clearly presents St. Augustine, not Bernard, arguably a testimonial to the growing erudition of the times, especially Counterreformation scholarship. The composition of the panel appears to be based on a print source, like many works in glass of the time. Augustine is modeled after an image of Bishop Gijsbert Masius von Herzogenbusch, in Gerard Livius, Gheschilderde Onwetenheyt Gisberti Masii . . . Gorinchem, Holland, 1614 (Hoegger, 2003, p. 304, fig. 130). The print of Bishop Mazius also includes the image of Christ and Mary with the same inscriptions as those in the panel. St. Augustine carries his attribute of the heart pierced with the arrow resting on the book he holds in his left hand. The motif comes from a line in the Confessions 9:2.3: “Thou hadst pierced our heart with thy love, and we carried thy words, as it were, thrust through our vitals” (Oulter, 2002; Schnaubelt, & Van Fleteren, 1999, p. 25). He is engaged in dialogue with a child. The miracle of the child is recorded in William Caxton’s edition of the Golden Legend of 1483 (section 5 pp. 23 –32; see also Schnaubelt, & Van Fleteren, 1999, p. 53 for additional sources). Caxton notes, accurately, that the story does not appear in earlier versions of Jacobus de Voragine’s compilation. He explains that he was motivated to add it since he has seen it depicted on an altar of the Black Friars in Antwerp. While struggling in writing his treatise On the Trinity, Augustine was walking at the sea shore and saw a child with a spoon transferring water from the sea to a “a little pit in the sand.” When the child explained that he was bringing the ocean into the pit, Augustine admonished him about so futile a task. The child replied. “I shall lightlier and sooner draw all the water of the sea and bring it into this pit than thou shalt bring the mystery of the Trinity and his divinity into thy little understanding.” The child then vanished. The fresco cycle of 1464–1465 by Benozzo Gozzoli for the apsidal chapel of Sant’Agostino, San Gimignano (Tuscany) also includes the scene, where, as in the Princeton panel, the child has a halo (Ahl, 1999, pp. 359–382, ill. p. 382). The Princeton panel’s depiction of a writing desk, complete with ink, pens, and books, also honors the erudition and prolific literary output of the saint. His legacy includes not only the Confessions, one of the most widely read books of medieval and Early Modern times, and On the Trinity, but many others including, the lengthy City of God written in response to the Sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410.
The image of John the Baptist Preaching is taken from a widely circulated series of personification of the virtues with biblical exemplars designed by Josias Murer (1564–1630). Five of the series are now in the British Museum (1883,0714.79 to 83). There were later iterations. Müller’s composition depends on a cycle of eight drawings after Murer signed and dated 1611 by Lorenz Lingg (Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe; Mensger, 2012). The Theological Virtue of Temperence shows John the Baptist Preaching (Inv. Nr.XI 1096; Mensger, 2012, p. 269, no. 435).

Cited
Didier Petit sale, 1843, p. 32, no. 308.
Jörger, 1978, pp. 134, 153.
Record of the Art Museum, 1963, p. 19.
Raguin, & Morgan, 1987, p. 85.