The Ecstasy of Saint Francis

The Ecstasy of Saint Francis, now at the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti, depicts the mystical experience in which Francis received the stigmata on Mount La Verna in 1224—one of the defining moments of Franciscan iconography. Sassetta's treatment situates the ecstasy in a spare rocky landscape that serves as a contemplative setting rather than a naturalistically described location. The Villa I Tatti collection, assembled by the art historian Bernard Berenson, focuses specifically on early Italian painting of the kind represented by this panel.

Francis kneels before a seraphic vision in a landscape of simplified ochre and grey rock forms, his arms extended in the posture of stigmatic reception. The seraph appears in a mandorla of gold at the upper right, connected to the saint by the traditional rays that transmit the wounds, Sassetta rendering this miraculous moment with formal clarity rather than dramatic intensity.