Arm Reliquary of Saint Louis of Toulouse
Unknown · 1336-1338
A cylinder of rock crystal, flanked by four Gothic buttresses of enamelled silver, rises from a square base with cut corners to a blessing hand in gilded silver. The hand emerges from two curved plaques of enamel bearing the arms of Aragon and Anjou and the words: Here is the arm bone of Saint Louis, bishop. A ring set with a sapphire encircles the fourth finger. At the foot of the cylinder four lozenge-shaped shields with the arms of Aragon and France-Anjou stand out against translucent enamel foliage on blue, and the engraved base carries two more. Louis of Toulouse, a Franciscan prince of the house of Anjou who renounced the crown of Naples for a bishopric and died in twelve ninety seven, was canonised in thirteen seventeen.
The reliquary was ordered for Queen Sancia of Majorca, wife of King Robert of Naples and the saint's sister-in-law, and completed before April thirteen thirty eight, the companion of the Saint Luke arm shown nearby. It travelled with the same queens to the Dominican convent of Medina del Campo, was sold in eighteen ninety to Frédéric Spitzer, and his widow gave it to the Louvre in his memory in eighteen ninety one.
Did You Know? The saint whose arm bone lay inside was the brother-in-law of the queen who paid for the reliquary.
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