Scenes from the Life of St Francis (Scene 5)

Scenes from the Life of St Francis (Scene 5), at the Museum Complex of San Francesco in Montefalco, forms part of the extensive fresco cycle that Benozzo Gozzoli painted in the church of San Francesco beginning in 1452. The Montefalco cycle was one of Gozzoli's most important early independent commissions after his work with Fra Angelico in Rome, and it established his reputation as a narrative painter of exceptional fluency and charm. Each scene depicts an episode from the Franciscan legend with the same combination of detailed costumes, luminous landscape, and pleasurable spatial depth that would characterize his Medici Chapel frescoes in Florence.

Gozzoli's fresco technique employs the standard buon fresco approach of painting into fresh plaster, the colors fixed permanently as the intonaco sets. The narrative scene is composed with the lateral clarity that allows viewers to read the sequential action from left to right, Gozzoli's figures placed in a light-filled landscape of characteristic blue sky and green hills.