Saint Thomas Aquinas

A star, a book, a black-and-white habit

Thomas Aquinas is identified by the Dominican habit — white tunic, black cloak — and by a sun or star worn at the breast, a sign the tradition attaches to the clarity of his teaching. A book is almost always with him, sometimes several, sometimes a model church. He belongs to the category of saints named by learning rather than by martyrdom, and the attributes follow: nothing here is an instrument of death.

What the record holds

The entry dates the work to 1476 and gives the Louvre in Paris as its location. No dimensions are recorded. It is filed under male portraiture, with Northern Renaissance as the style and Flemish as the nationality. The measured colour family is neutral — which is the expected reading for a habit that is, by rule, black and white.

A pair in the record

The same catalogue holds a Saint Jerome by this artist, likewise dated 1476 and likewise at the Louvre. The two entries agree on year, collection, style and nationality. What the record does not say is how the two works relate, and nothing is claimed here beyond the coincidence of the fields — a coincidence that is itself worth noticing when a collection is read as data rather than as a wall.