Saint Eligius and King Dagobert (1520/30): Artwork and History

Saint Eligius and King Dagobert (1520/30) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Jean de Gourmont French, 1506-1551.

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

The son of a goldsmith, Gourmont drew on his family background for this roundel showing the patron saint of goldsmiths, Eligius, and the king he frequently advised. Eligius, his halo encircling his head, busily hammers out a golden disc on an anvil while his assistant mans the bellows. Dagobert, wearing a slender crown that Eligius may himself have wrought, gestures from the throne. The king was said to have valued the saint’s opinion over that of court nobles. Eligius was a famous goldsmith to Clothar II and to his successor, Dagobert I, before becoming a priest. For this reason, he was to become the patron saint of goldsmiths, blacksmiths, and farriers. Although Eligius (or Eloi) was a saint from ancient times, his cult attained its widest popularity in the later Middle Ages.

Object facts

• Title: Saint Eligius and King Dagobert
• Date: 1520/30
• Artist attribution: Jean de Gourmont French, 1506-1551
• Place of origin: France
• Medium: Engraving in black on ivory laid paper
• Dimensions: Sheet, cut to platemark: 8.1 × 8.1 cm (3 1/4 × 3 1/4 in.)
• Type: Print
• Department: Prints and Drawings
• Reference number: 1956.1060

Collection credit

Bequest of Mrs. Potter Palmer, Jr.

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The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.