Saint Francis of Assisi

Bartolomeo Vivarini's Saint Francis of Assisi presents the Franciscan founder with his characteristic stigmata and rough habit, depicted in the traditional half-length devotional format that made such panels suitable for chapel niches or private oratories. Vivarini, the leading painter of the Murano workshop that served Venetian and Adriatic clients in the second half of the fifteenth century, brought the late Gothic tradition's precise figure drawing and bright mineral colors to his Franciscan subjects. The saint's upward gaze and the careful rendering of the stigmata wounds create a devotional image that invites contemplation of both the saint's suffering and his ecstatic union with Christ's Passion.

Vivarini's hard-edged, sharply modeled figure of Saint Francis reflects the influence of Paduan sculpture and Mantegna's painting, with rich coloring and precise detail in the rendering of the saint's Franciscan habit and attributes.