Saint Francis

Nuno Gonçalves's Saint Francis, painted around 1460 and now in the National Museum of Ancient Art, Lisbon, is attributed to the foremost Portuguese painter of the 15th century. The Franciscan saint, founder of the order devoted to poverty and humility, was enormously popular across Iberia. Gonçalves served as court painter to King Afonso V during Portugal's Age of Discovery, when the nation was establishing its maritime empire across Africa and Asia.

Gonçalves renders the saint with the precise oil technique characteristic of the Portuguese school, combining Netherlandish surface detail with a distinctive Iberian sobriety in the treatment of the humble Franciscan figure.