The main core of the museum's collection of Gothic sculpture (approximately four hundred works) covers a period lasting from the end of the 13th century through to the beginning of the 14th century. The convent buildings (the chapter house, sacristy, and the Notre-Dame de Pitié chapel), which are all more or less contemporary with each other (from the 14th to the beginning of the 16th century) open onto the east gallery of the Augustins cloister. They provide a perfect and harmonious setting for these religious works that mainly originate from buildings in Toulouse.
The term "gothic" was given as a derogatory name by the Renaissance humanists to qualify it as "barbarian" art. Today it describes a style that was born in the Ile-de-France in the 12th century. The "gothic" style spread and encountered different fortunes throughout the whole of Western Europe. In the 13th century Toulouse, while a southern gothic architectural style was taking root in the cathedral, and later in the great single-nave edifices of the Jacobins, the Cordeliers and the Augustins , sculpture did not adopt the gothic style until later, towards the second half of the century. This can be explained by the strong romanesque streak in the city and by the late unification of Toulouse with the kingdom in 1271.
Medieval gothic sculpture, essentially commemorative, funeral or votive, is well represented in the museum's collection and is based around the remarkable ensemble from the Rieux chapel, despite its extensive destruction which took place during the 18th and 19th centuries.
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