Saint Louis of Toulouse Holding a Book c. early 1460s

Giovanni Bellini made this pen and brown ink drawing of Saint Louis of Toulouse in Venice, sometime around 1500. We see the saint holding a book and wearing a bishop's mitre. This imagery has a history. The Franciscans promoted Louis’s sainthood during the 14th and 15th centuries in order to bolster the church’s authority. Bellini, as a keen observer of the Venetian social world, knew how to tailor images for the institutions that supported him. Here, he uses the image of the saint to suggest the power and authority of the Church in Venice. By considering the political, economic, and religious contexts of Renaissance Venice, we start to understand how Bellini's art engaged with the structures of power in his time. Art historians consult primary source material – letters, inventories, and so on – to more fully understand the world in which artists like Bellini operated, and, by extension, what meanings their works might have held.