A new exhibition at London’s National Gallery explores St. Francis’s impact on art since the 13th century. El Greco’s *Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata* (1590–95) is among the 40 paintings on display.

The Original Renaissance Man

Among a certain circle of art historians, including the BBC broadcaster Andrew Graham-Dixon, is a belief that the Renaissance was ignited by a single spark in the form of one man: St. Francis of Assisi. Born into wealth in Umbria around 1181, Francis abandoned a lavish lifestyle for one of poverty and preaching after experiencing a vision: in his 20s, in a chapel outside of Assisi, while he looked at a painting of the crucifixion, Christ came alive and said, “Repair my church.” Francis subsequently traveled throughout Italy and the Holy Land, establishing the Franciscan Order on the pillars of penury, peace, and environmentalism.

Sandro Botticelli’s *Saint Francis of Assisi with Angels,* painted in the mid–15th century.

Graham-Dixon argues that the way Francis preached to the illiterate working class—using the Italian vernacular to recount Christ’s humanity and humility—enkindled more realistic, less divine depictions of his body. And by filling that body with muscle, blood, and pathos, artists laid the foundations for the great European art movement.