Le Pape Nicolas V, en 1449, se fait ouvrir le caveau de saint François d'Assise

This canvas from 1630 depicts an extraordinary historical episode: Pope Nicholas V, during the Jubilee of 1449, ordering the opening of the tomb of Saint Francis of Assisi in the Basilica of Sacro Convento in Assisi to venerate the founder's body. The subject is historically precise — the episode is documented — and offered La Hyre an opportunity to combine papal ceremony, sacred history, and the veneration of relics in a single composition. The cult of relics was one of the flashpoints of Reformation controversy, and the Counter-Reformation Church responded by reasserting the veneration of saints' bodies as theologically legitimate and spiritually potent. A painting celebrating a pope's personal veneration of Saint Francis's tomb was thus simultaneously a historical narrative and a doctrinal statement. La Hyre painted the work at the beginning of his mature period and it demonstrates his early facility with the ceremonial multi-figure composition that would characterise his subsequent May paintings for Notre-Dame and other public religious commissions. The Louvre's holding of the work preserved it as part of the French national collection.

The underground tomb setting — excavated below the basilica floor — provides an unusual spatial configuration with dramatic lighting possibilities: artificial torch or candle light illuminating the papal party descending into a vaulted crypt space. La Hyre manages the compositional challenge of a descending procession entering a constrained architectural space by using the diagonal of stairs or ramp as the main compositional line, with the opening of the tomb as the terminal focus. The papal retinue's ceremonial costume provides colour and visual variety in the procession.