The monks of Ognissanti, Florence had acquired the skull of Saint Luxorius (popularly known in Pisa as "san Rossore") in 1422 and two years later they commissioned the reliquary to house it.

The sculpture is documented as being in Pisa in 1591 and is now in the city's Museo Nazionale di San Matteo.

The work marks a clear break with the previous medieval tradition of the production of reliquaries.

The sculpted saint is very far from the hieratic and metaphysical typification that a devotional object traditionally required, being worked as a realistic "Roman-style" bust, that is, like ancient statues.

Some details are selectively taken up from ancient portraits, such as the definition of the short beard with engraved dashes, as in the Roman portraiture of the third century.