One Step Beyond His Master: Giotto's Saint Francis

This painting was made by Giotto, the student of Cimabue whose work we just saw. Giotto is a name you'll hear constantly if you ever travel to Florence. This piece is titled Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata.

Francis, from the Italian town of Assisi, was a devoted follower of Christ. According to legend, one day at a mountaintop he experienced the very same pain Jesus felt while being nailed to the cross. As word of this spread, he was canonized a saint.

Giotto captured that exact moment. Notice how much more natural this painting feels compared to Cimabue's — the drapery and the background are both far more realistic, and the mountain shrinks convincingly as it recedes into the distance, giving a real sense of a summit. Still, it isn't quite perfect: the house in front of Francis is painted smaller than he is, and the tree, instead of shrinking steadily with distance, suddenly grows larger partway back — small giveaways of this being early Renaissance work.

Along the bottom of the panel are three small scenes, like a comic strip, each telling part of the Francis story. On the far left, Saint Peter appears in a sleeping pope's dream, showing him a vision: through Francis, the crumbling Church of Italy will be rebuilt. The middle scene shows Francis being told that this vision was indeed a divine message, and being sent off to do God's work. The scene on the right might look like someone feeding birds, but it actually depicts Francis preaching even to birds — with the birds gathering to listen, and even the tree seeming to lean in and listen along.

Because pioneering Renaissance painters like these were active in Florence, the city became fertile ground for the generation of masters who followed — da Vinci, Michelangelo, and countless others.