In around 1330, a new art form appeared in Toulouse - that of the so-called Rieux master or workshop. Having worked in the cathedral and in the Augustins, (as has been demonstrated by Maurice Prin), this workshop was also responsible for the statues in the Rieux chapel. Founded by Jean Tissandier, bishop of Rieux-Volvestre (south of Toulouse) from 1324 to 1348, the chapel was built to the east of the large church of the Cordeliers convent to which it is joined. A spiritual centre for a college, which never saw the light of day, and the sacred home to the sepulture of Jean Tissandier himself and his Franciscan brothers, this chapel was destroyed at the beginning of the 19th century. The epitaph of the bishop of Rieux recounted how he buried his brothers with his own bare hands. The scale model held by one of the statues of the donor seems to provide a faithful image of the exterior architecture of the chapel. The interior decor still remains quite unknown. "Sixteen large stone figures around the church, one marble figure of the founder and several smaller ones and other small objects" which had to be "torn down from the walls" came to the museum in 1803. Several of these works were subjected to somewhat obscure vicissitudes. The eighteen statues exhibited here were already reunited in 1912. They are the following: John the Baptist;eleven apostles (only four of which have been identified with any certainty); three Franciscan saints (Saint Anthony of Padua, Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Louis of Toulouse; the lower part and the head of a Virgin; two figures - one recumbent and the other kneeling by Jean Tissandier. Two other statues from this series, a Christ and a Virgin, are today kept in the musée Bonnat in Bayonne. This ensemble of sculptures testifies to the great vitality and diversity of artistic creation at this epoch in Toulouse - we may wonder what there is in common between the gentle and serene Virgin of Rieux and the tormented figure of Saint Paul. The effects of the 100 years war and the confrontations in Aquitaine marked the second half of the 14th century, after the black plague in 1348. Added to these trials were the problems of food shortages. However, artistic activity in the Rieux chapel lasted late into the second half of the 14th century and into the 15th century with works such as the tombstones with their bas-reliefs representing, among others, the lawyer Pierre de Cuguron and the moneychanger Jean Molinier.