Stigmata of St. Francis

Francesco Pesellino's Stigmata of Saint Francis, painted around 1440 for the Louvre, depicts the Franciscan saint receiving the wounds of Christ on Mount La Verna. Pesellino's refined, jewel-like style made him a sought-after painter of predella panels and small devotional works in mid-fifteenth-century Florence. This work belongs to the Early Renaissance, the transformative period in European art when painters first applied mathematical perspective, naturalistic figure modeling, and archaeological interest in antiquity to the inherited traditions of medieval devotional painting. The tension between Gothic grace and Renaissance structure gives art of this period a distinctive energy.

The mountain landscape provides a dramatic setting for the miraculous vision, with the seraph's radiance rendered in gold against the darkened sky, painted with the miniaturist precision that characterizes Pesellino's finest work.