St Francis of Assisi adoring the Crucifix

St Francis, who founded the Franciscan orders in the early thirteenth century, is identifiable by his brown habit, as well as the stigmata – marks corresponding to the wounds inflicted on Christ during his trial and crucifixion – visible on his hands. St Francis received the stigmata while in prayer, signifying the purity and conviction of his faith.

In this painting, St Francis is represented experiencing a personal union with God through his adoration of the Crucifixion. Originally intended for contemplation within the private home, the painting demonstrated how such a union could be achieved through prayer and by following St Francis’s virtuous life of humility, temperance and kindness.

Bernardo Strozzi was a leading painter in early seventeenth-century Genoa and Venice. In 1598 he had entered the monastery of San Barnabà in Genoa as a Franciscan monk of the Capuchin branch, although he continued to work as an artist, producing, according to his biographer Raffaele Sophrani, ‘various little paintings either of St Francis, or of St Claire, or of some other Saint of his own order’. In c.1610 he was given dispensation to leave the monastery and resume his artistic practice to support his widowed mother, an invalid, and an unmarried sister.

Tony Magnusson, Curator of European Art, 2016–18