Margarito of Arezzo produced this austere full-length portrait of St Francis of Assisi shortly before the middle of the century, some twenty years after his rapid canonisation in 1228.

This new saint, a major figure in the religious and spiritual worlds at the end of the Middle Ages, was hugely popular. Veneration of St Francis was promulgated through images and the construction of a basilica in Assisi, consecrated in 1253. The building site became a major focal point in the revival of Italian painting around 1300, which brought together, among others, Cimabue, Giotto and Siena’s Duccio, Simone Martini and the Lorenzetti brothers.

The simplicity of the layout and sober palette reflect the saint's ideal of poverty. As founder of the Franciscan mendicant order, he lived by its rule and wore its simple homespun habit and a three-knotted belt symbolising the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. The limited palette and the absence of a gold background express this evangelical poverty. On either side of the image can be read the legend SANCTUS [FRAN] CISCUS – inscriptions such as these linking the portrayal of a character to a written name came from the iconic tradition. The signature at the bottom of the image, MARGARIT [US] DE ARITO M[E] F[ECIT] (Margarito of Arezzo made me), was an exceptional feature at a time when artists were considered merely as craftsmen.

As the first saint to bear stigmata, his upturned palm reveals a similar wound to those of Christ – a detail that expresses a spirituality based not on the invisible but which needs to see and be seen.