St Francis in Meditation
The original, as its museum records it
Every line above is reproduced from the holding institution’s own catalogue entry, which is linked. Where their title, date or attribution differs from ours, theirs is the one printed here.
The file this print is made from
Sizes
About this painting
Everything Francis owns is on the ledge, and it is also everything he contemplates. Sotheby's reads the outcrop as a rock he has improvised for use as an altar: on it a book of scriptures, a skull, a simple cross. The skull rests beside the book, reading and dying held as one act of prayer.
Trent had encouraged a new focus on devotional life and re-affirmed the veneration of images. The design succeeded, and the shop repeated it. This canvas is that repetition. The first owner on record for a man with three possessions was a Spanish duke.
Sources: Sotheby's, 'Contemplation Divine' sale, 2014, lot 25 essay · Spanish Art in the US (spanishart.us), San Diego Museum of Art entry · Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, published provenance for accession 62.13
Printed on demand. Public-domain masterwork, reproduced from a 5,821 px master of the original. The whole image is printed — never cropped to fit the sheet — so every sheet carries an archival margin, and the dimensions and resolution listed above are the ones you receive.