Works of Mercy

Works of Mercy, now in the Wellcome Collection, addresses the seven corporal works — feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, sheltering the traveller, visiting the sick, ransoming the captive, burying the dead — that formed a central catechetical teaching of both medieval and Counter-Reformation Catholicism. As a visual programme, the Works of Mercy had a long history in Flemish art, appearing in altarpiece wings, prints, and devotional books, and Francken's version continues this tradition while updating the figure types to seventeenth-century Antwerp dress. The Wellcome Collection's acquisition of this work connects it to the institution's interest in medicine and care, since visiting the sick and tending to bodily needs intersected with early modern medical practice. Francken organized such multi-scene programmes efficiently, subdividing the canvas into narrative vignettes that each illustrate one work while sharing a continuous spatial setting, a format he used across religious, mythological, and moral subject matter.

Oil on canvas allows Francken to differentiate the six or seven scene-vignettes through subtle shifts in local colour and lighting while maintaining compositional unity. Figures in the foreground are more fully modelled with opaque paint and glazed shadows, while background groups become progressively more summary, creating an illusion of spatial recession without full atmospheric perspective.