Saint Francis and a Bishop Saint

Fra Angelico's Saint Francis and a Bishop Saint, painted around 1420 for the J. Paul Getty Museum, combines the Franciscan founder with a bishop saint in a devotional pairing. The presence of Francis in Dominican-associated art reflects the close, if sometimes competitive, relationship between the two great mendicant orders. Fra Angelico — born Guido di Pietro, known in religion as Fra Giovanni da Fiesole — was a Dominican friar whose painting practice was inseparable from his spiritual vocation. Working primarily for his own order and for Florentine civic and private patrons, he created some of the most luminous and spiritually powerful images in the history of European art.

The paired saints are rendered with Fra Angelico's characteristic gentle naturalism and luminous color, the contrast between Francis's rough habit and the bishop's vestments painted with careful attention to textile differentiation.