Saint Simon

Theodoric of Prague was court painter to Emperor Charles IV and the leading artist of the Bohemian Gothic school, whose greatest achievement was the decoration of the Chapel of the Holy Cross at Karlštejn Castle. This Saint Simon of around 1360 belongs to that extraordinary ensemble of over 130 panel paintings depicting saints, church fathers, and holy warriors. The cycle represented the most ambitious panel-painting program in fourteenth-century Central Europe, conceived as a sacred treasury surrounding the imperial relic collection.

Painted in tempera on panel with applied plaster relief for the halo and attributes, Theodoric's style features characteristically massive, volumetric figures with broad faces, heavy-lidded eyes, and softly modeled flesh that breaks decisively from linear Gothic conventions.