Saint Francis

This Saint Francis at the Metropolitan Museum, dating to around 1450, depicts the founder of the Franciscan order who held special significance in Sienese religious life. The Franciscans were among Siena's most important religious orders, and Bernardino of Siena—whose miracle panels Sano di Pietro painted extensively—was a Franciscan friar. Francis is identified by the stigmata—the wounds of Christ miraculously received at La Verna—and typically depicted in his brown habit in a rocky landscape setting evoking the Umbrian mountains where he received divine grace. Sano's Francis was painted for a market saturated with Franciscan devotion following Bernardino's 1450 canonization.

The saint is rendered in the brown Franciscan habit with Sano di Pietro's characteristic precision and devotional warmth, the stigmata visible as testimony to Francis's mystical identification with Christ.