Saint Francis renounces his Earthly Father

Sassetta's Saint Francis Renouncing his Earthly Father, painted around 1437 for the National Gallery, depicts the pivotal moment when Francis stripped off his clothes to reject his merchant father's wealth. This dramatic scene from the Franciscan legend was among the most frequently depicted episodes in Italian art devoted to the order's founder. Sassetta — Stefano di Giovanni — was the dominant painter in Siena during the first half of the fifteenth century, maintaining the city's Gothic tradition of refined spirituality and jewel-like color even as Florentine artists were developing the naturalistic revolution of the Early Renaissance.

The narrative is staged with characteristic clarity, the contrasting groups of Francis with the bishop and the angry father with his followers arranged in a balanced composition rendered in Sassetta's refined tempera technique.