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| "St. Francis in the Desert" (1475-1478) By Giovanni Bellini |
This masterpiece of spiritual poetry has enthralled generations of visitors to The Frick Collection. A monumental painting, the largest work on panel at the Frick, it portrays Francesco Bernardone of Assisi (c. 1181–1226), the medieval saint who renounced earthly riches to embrace a life of poverty, humility, simplicity, and prayer and was honored for his empathetic faith with the stigmata, the imprint of the five wounds of Christ's Crucifixion (see image below). A recent technical investigation addressed some longstanding questions about the picture's meaning. It had been proposed that the scene once contained a winged seraph on a cross, delivering the wounds of the Crucifixion to Francis. The technical study strongly discounts this possibility: the painting probably never contained a seraph. The examination also confirmed that the subtle stigmata on Francis's hands are the original work of Bellini himself — not a later retouching — and that the saint once bore a wound on his left foot as well. Owing to abrasion of the paint surface over time, this detail is no longer visible to the naked eye.[link]
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