The Incredulity of Saint Thomas

In the 1540s Lyon was the banking capital of France, and much of its money was Florentine. Merchants and bankers from Florence lived and traded there, with a chapel of their own in the Dominican church of Notre-Dame de Confort. One of them, the banker Tommaso Guadagni, an adviser to King Francis I, ordered this altarpiece for that chapel. Salviati painted it in Florence in the mid-1540s and it was sent over the Alps. Christ carries the banner of the Resurrection. Thomas, the apostle who would not believe until he had touched the wounds, kneels at his side and looks up into his face, while the others crowd in behind. The picture stayed in Lyon until it was seized in 1790, during the Revolution, and reached the Louvre four years later. Salviati painted it on wood, and it has since been transferred to canvas.