The Saint Francis of Assisi exhibition in London

Curated by National Gallery Director, Dr Gabriele Finaldi, and the Ahmanson Research Associate Curator in Art and Religion at the National Gallery, Dr Joost Joustra, Saint Francis of Assisibrings together paintings from across the National Gallery’s collection – by Sassetta, Botticelli, and Zurbarán – with international loans by Caravaggio, Murillo, and El Greco as well as works by Stanley Spencer, Antony Gormley, Andrea Büttner, Arte Povera artist Giuseppe Penone, and a new commission from Richard Long.

 

The exhibition will display over 40 works of art from European and American public and private collections, spanning more than seven centuries. They will range from medieval painted panels (several predating the earliest paintings in the National Gallery), relic-like objects to manuscripts and even a Marvel comic. The exhibition will shed light on how Saint Francis captured the imagination of artists, how his image has evolved over centuries, and how his universal appeal has transcended time, continents, and differing religious traditions. 

 

 

 

As the popularity of the Franciscan movement grew, so did the numbers of Friars Minor, as Francis called his followers, who spread across Europe, establishing friaries, building ever-larger Franciscan churches and commissioning pictorial decoration that gave great prominence to their founder, instigating a flowering of artistic and architectural production in the critical period of artistic change leading up to the Renaissance. It is one of the paradoxes of Franciscan art that some of the most magnificent churches of the later Middle Ages, with their monuments, funerary chapels, altarpieces, and frescoes, were created by an order of mendicant friars, committed to poverty. 

 

 

In the third room of the exhibition some of the very earliest works dedicated to Francis are gathered, such as a Vita-retable showing Saint Francis with posthumous miracles (about 1253, Museo del Tesoro della Basilica di San Francesco in Assisi), but also later works inspired by this early tradition, such as Sandro Botticelli’s Saint Francis of Assisi with Angels (about 1475‒80, the National Gallery). The drawings by Matthew Paris in the Chronica maiora (Parker Library, Corpus Christi, Cambridge) present some of the earliest English depictions of Saint Francis.

 

 

 

 

Francis believed that nature itself was the mirror of God. He called all creatures his ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’, and even preached to the birds and supposedly persuaded a wolf in the Italian town of Gubbio to stop attacking the locals if they agreed to feed the animal. He saw God reflected in nature. In the hymn he composed - Canticle of the Sun - he gives God thanks for Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Brother Wind, Water, Fire, and Earth. Many of the stories that surround the life of Francis relate that he had a great love for animals and the environment, and these stories provided tremendous sources of artistic inspiration. Some great examples are shown in Room Five of the exhibition, such as Giovanni Costa’s Frate Francesco e Frate Sole (1878‒86, The Castle Howard Collection), Andrea Büttner’s Vogelpredigt (Sermon to the Birds), (2010, Private collection) or Giuseppe Penone’s Albero porta-credo/Door Tree-Cedar (2012, Courtesy Giuseppe Penone, Turin and Gagosian).

 

 

By the time of his death in 1226 his followers were preaching his message all over Europe, and beyond. But Francis had already resigned the leadership of his order, dismayed by the increasingly worldly and materialistic turn it was taking as it became a pillar of the established Church. Francis’s radical choices are explored in Room Six of the exhibition with objects such as the extraordinary relic of Francis’s habit from Santa Croce, Florence, a series of lithographs by Arthur Boyd (1965, The British Museum), Sacco (Sack) by Alberto Burri (1953, Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini, Collezione Burri, Città di Castello) and Fra Angelico’s Saint Francis before the Sultan (1429, Lindenau Museum Altenburg). In 1228, Francis was declared a saint by Pope Gregory IX.

 

A small section of the exhibition is dedicated to Saint Clare (16 July 1194–11 August 1253), one of the first followers of Francis. Following her death, the order she founded was renamed as the Order of Saint Clare, commonly referred to today as the Poor Clares. Works such as Giovanni di Paolo’s Saint Clare Rescuing a Child Mauled by a Wolf (1455‒60, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston) and Josefa de Óbidos’s Nativity Scene with Saint Francis and Saint Clare (1647, Private Collection) will be on show.

 

 

 

Dr Joost Joustra, the Ahmanson Research Associate Curator in Art and Religion at the National Gallery, says: ‘From his native Umbria, Saint Francis’s image spread rapidly to become a global phenomenon. From the earliest written biographies by Thomas of Celano and Saint Bonaventure (13th century) and the first painted altarpieces and murals (notably those attributed to Giotto and his collaborators in the Upper Church of San Francesco at Assisi), Francis’s life became both an example worthy of imitation, and to this day, a continuous source of artistic fascination.’

 

The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated publication and by a programme of lectures, events, activities, and digital content. 

 

Dates: from 6 May to 30 July 2023. Where: National Gallery in London, Ground Floor Galleries. Tickets: admission free.