Saint Francis receiving the Stigmata

Saint Francis receiving the Stigmata, painted around 1440 and held in the Pinacoteca Vaticana in Rome, depicts one of the most celebrated mystical events in medieval Christianity: Francis of Assisi receiving the wounds of Christ's Passion on his hands, feet, and side while on retreat at La Verna in 1224. Fra Angelico painted this subject as part of a Franciscan commission—unusual for a Dominican friar, but reflecting the broad devotional currency of Francis's stigmatisation across religious orders. The Pinacoteca Vaticana version allows comparison with other major treatments of the subject in the Renaissance tradition.

The stigmatisation typically required depicting a ray of light or a seraph connecting Christ in a vision to Francis below—a compositional challenge of linking earthly and heavenly registers. Fra Angelico handles the diagonal ray with characteristic restraint, focusing pictorial attention on Francis's pose of receptive abandonment rather than on spectacular visual effects.