Saints Jerome, Louis of Toulouse and Andrew

The figure in the middle is worth stopping on. He is Louis of Toulouse, known in Venice as Sant'Alvise, a prince of the house of Anjou who stood in line for the crown of Naples in the late 1200s and gave it up to become a Franciscan friar and then a bishop, dying at 23. Tintoretto puts a bishop's rich cope over his plain grey Franciscan habit, the crown he refused and the poverty he chose worn together. To his sides are Saint Jerome with his book and Saint Andrew with his cross. All three were name-saints of the Venetian officials who ordered the picture for the finance magistrates' building, Girolamo, Alvise and Andrea. In Venetian paintings the cope of Louis is often embroidered with the gold lilies of the French royal line he turned his back on.