A Bishop Saint with a Donor (Saint Louis of Toulouse?) (early 1400s): Art, History and Details

A Bishop Saint with a Donor (Saint Louis of Toulouse?) (early 1400s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The style of this painting suggests that it comes from Catalonia in northeastern Spain, though the identity of its artist remains unknown. The painting represents a youthful bishop-saint identifiable by a bishop’s symbols of authority, his miter and crozier. He wears rich vestments. Below, the figure in black represents the donor of the painting—likely a wealthy layperson rather than a cleric. The identity of the saintly bishop is speculated to be Saint Louis, Bishop of Toulouse, on the basis of his youth. Louis was consecrated Bishop of Toulouse in 1297, died six months later at the age of 23, and was canonized in 1317. His relics were moved in 1423 to Valencia and his cult flourished in Spain.

Object facts

• Title: A Bishop Saint with a Donor (Saint Louis of Toulouse?)
• Date: early 1400s
• Culture: Spain, Catalonia, early 15th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: tempera with raised and gilded gesso on wood
• Dimensions: Framed: 191.4 x 127.3 x 14 cm (75 3/8 x 50 1/8 x 5 1/2 in.); Painted surface: 171.5 x 107 cm (67 1/2 x 42 1/8 in.); Panel: 178 x 117.2 cm (70 1/16 x 46 1/8 in.)
• Collection: MED - Medieval Art
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1927.197

Collection credit

Gift of the Friends of The Cleveland Museum of Art

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1928.
• Tietze, Hans. Masterpieces of European Painting in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1939.
• Paintings in the Cleveland Museum of Art. [Cleveland]: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1945.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.