St. Francis of Assisi

St. Francis of Assisi is depicted at the apotheosis of his religious life. The saint gazes to the heavens and holds his hands to his chest in a gesture of humility, displaying one of the five wounds of Christ’s crucifixion. This is the stigmata, which he has just received from an angel. The artist merely suggests this apparation in the form of divine light emerging from the upper-left corner.

The young Annibale painted numerous small, devotional images of St. Francis throughout the 1580s during his Bolognese period. Many of these personal paintings remain in private collections, though other examples can be seen at the Capitoline Museum in Rome and the Accademia in Venice. Annibale’s depictions of the mendicant saint shifted away from spiritual intimacy toward classical narrative once he moved to Rome in 1595.