The core of the museum's collection of Gothic sculpture covers a period from the very beginning of the 13th century to the start of the 16th century. The preserved convent halls (the Chapter hall, the sacristy and the Chapel of Notre Dame de Pitié), which are all contemporary to the pieces, make an ideal setting for these works which mostly come from Toulousan buildings.
The term ‘Gothic' was forged as a pejorative by the humanists of the Renaissance to describe the ‘barbarian' art which had preceded them. Today the term is used to name a style which appeared around 1140 in Ile-de-France (Paris and its surrounding area), on the building site for the Saint Denis Royal Abbey. This style went on to spread, more or less successfully, throughout Western Europe.
In Toulouse in the 13th century, while a southern Gothic architectural style was establishing itself with the building of Saint Etienne Cathedral, then in the great wide, single-naved, aisle-less buildings of the Jacobins, the Cordeliers and the Augustins, sculpture did not begin to adopt the Gothic style until later, in the second half of the century. This particularity can be explained by the political and religious context in the city and county of Toulouse, annexed to the kingdom of France in 1271 after a long period of troublesrelated to the Cathar heresy. The arrival in the city of the mendicant orders did not immediately foster sculpture.
A new economic prosperity built on the presence of the parliament, on trade and on the production of woad, as well as a more generally favourable context, created the conditions for a real resurgence of the workshops, from the 14th century to the beginning of the 16th century. The Renaissance was introduced as was often the case, via ornamental vocabulary. The themes addressed and the style of the sculptures fell within Gothic style until around 1520. The small number of secular works preserved no doubt accentuates this impression, as religious sculpture was often more conformist, following the requests of the patrons themselves.