SIMONE MARTINI
(b. 1280/85, Siena, d. 1344, Avignon)

Altar of St Louis of Toulouse (detail)

c. 1317
Tempera on wood, 56 x 38 cm
Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples

The picture shows the extreme right panel of the predella representing the scene of resurrecting a boy. Here we find the scene of a miracle involving a small child: a man prays with a statuette of St Louis in his hands asking for his intervention and his child, who had died shortly before, miraculously comes back to life. With its lively narrative quality and especially because of the iconography involving the death of a child, this scene is very similar to the episodes depicted in the altarpiece of the Blessed Agostino Novello.