Events, Festivals and Exhibitions

This spring, the National Gallery will host the first significant exhibition to examine Saint Francis of Assisi (1181/82-1226), one of history’s most venerated and inspiring people, and his life and impact.

Saint Francis of Assisi, an exhibition organised by National Gallery Director Dr Gabriele Finaldi and Dr Joost Joustra, brings together works by Sassetta, Botticelli, and Zurbarán, as well as international loans by Caravaggio, Murillo, and El Greco, as well as pieces by Stanley Spencer, Antony Gormley, Andrea Büttner, and Arte Povera artist Giuseppe Penone.

Over 40 pieces of art from public and private collections in Europe and America will be on show in the exhibition. They will include manuscripts, a Marvel comic, painted panels from the Middle Ages and relic-like objects. The display will provide insight into how Saint Francis caught the attention of artists, and his appearance developed through the years, and how his attraction has endured across ages, countries, and other religious traditions.

Francis was conceived to a successful silk trader. He had the conventional wealthy life, but he became increasingly disenchanted with the world. He had to reflect on his life as a result of experiences including his horrible wartime experience, incarceration and a protracted sickness. Life-altering events included a spiritual glimpse of Christ at the San Damiano church and his interaction with a leper. He founded the order of Friars Minor after giving up all of his wealth and adopting a penitent lifestyle in Christ’s footsteps. He was given the stigmata in 1224, which are physical scars that resemble the wounds Jesus sustained while being crucified. These occurrences helped him become more well-known as a preacher, peacemaker and protector of the weak.

Francis’s life and miracles provided a wealth of imagery and served as a major inspiration for artists. Francis is arguably the most depicted saint in art history, outside of those from the New Testament. The Franciscan movement expanded alongside the quick dissemination of images depicting his likeness and reputation, created by some of the greatest painters. Art historians have calculated that as many as 20,000 representations of Francis may have been created in the century after his death.

Francis is introduced in the first chamber of the exhibition through both more modern allusions such as Antony Gormley’s Untitled (for Francis) and masterpieces such as Francisco de Zurbarán’s Saint Francis in Meditation.

A selection of the very first Franciscan artworks are displayed in the third room of the exhibition, including a Vita-retable depicting Saint Francis with posthumous miracles, and later works that were influenced by this earliest tradition, such as Saint Francis of Assisi with Angels by Sandro Botticelli. Some of the oldest English representations of Saint Francis may be seen in the illustrations of Matthew Paris found in the Chronica maiora in the Parker Library in Corpus Christi, Cambridge.

The exhibition demonstrates that Saint Francis of Assisi is still a compelling and inspirational figure centuries after his death.

Also at the National Gallery

Nalini Malani: My Reality Is Different (2 March to 11 June, free), The Ugly Duchess: Beauty and Satire in the Renaissance (16 March to 11 June 2023, free); and After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art (25 March to 13 August 2023, charged).

Saint Francis of Assisi

National Gallery from Ground Floor Galleries 6 May – 30 July 2023. Admission free.  Open daily from 10am to 6pm, Friday until 9pm.

For more information, visit nationalgallery.org.uk.

Mai image: Vita-retable of Saint Francis, about 1253, Museo del Tesoro della Basilica di San Francesco, Assisi © Photographic archive of the Sacred Convent of S. Francesco in Assisi, Italy.