Saint Louis of Toulouse
Piero della Francesca, 1460
This fresco fragment, painted in 1460 by Piero della Francesca, shows Louis of Toulouse as a young man wearing a Franciscan habit beneath episcopal vestments, following the customary iconography of the saint. The figure carries the gravity typical of early Renaissance sacred portraits, with well-defined volumes and a restrained palette. For a long time its authorship was questioned because of its poor condition: Roberto Longhi proposed Lorentino d'Arezzo instead, but a restoration in 1998 revealed the handling of volume and colour and strengthened the attribution to Piero. The fresco was taken from a wall of the former Palazzo Pretorio in Sansepolcro, Tuscany, in the mid-nineteenth century; the detachment destroyed a Latin inscription that probably named the patron. It is now in the town's Museo Civico. The edge of the vestments is decorated with small figures of saints, a device the painter also used in his Saint Augustine in Lisbon.
- Painter
- Piero della Francesca
- Date
- 1460
- Medium
- fresco
- Dimensions
- 123 × 90 cm
- Museum
- Museo Civico di Sansepolcro, Sansepolcro
- Movement
- Early Renaissance
- Genre
- religious art
- Depicts
- Louis of Toulouse
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