Spanish school; XVI century.

Spanish school; XVI century.
"Saint Louis of France".
Oil on panel.
Presents restorations.
Measurements: 120 x 60 cm.
This work shows us Saint Louis IX of France (Poissy, 1214 - Tunis, 1270) son of Louis VIII the Lion and Blanca of Castile, king of France and canonized by Boniface VIII in 1297. During his lifetime he was already known as an ascetic, which he combined with government, also belonging to the secular Franciscan Order, in addition to founding monasteries and being in command of the Seventh Crusade and the Eighth. Due to his importance in the French monarchy and his active participation in religious life, Saint Louis was understood as an example of virtue and a reference for the monarchs, for this reason his figure was often represented during the Baroque period. So much so that the representation of Saint Louis did not require much more to identify him than what accompanies him here. This type of representations of Saint Louis were not only typical of the Baroque, since in Spain the Saint was frequently represented with the arrival of the Bourbons in the 1700s. Because the lineage of the Bourbons was first established with the monarchy in the best possible way, when in the 13th century Robert of France, the sixth son of Louis IX, descendant of the dynasty of the Capets, the oldest in Europe, took Beatrice of Burgundy, the heiress of that territory, as his wife. One of the couple's sons, named Louis, would become by the grace of King Charles IV of France the first Duke of Bourbon.