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The St Francis cycle in the Sassetti Chapel starts in the tympanum on the left wall with the Renunciation of Worldly Goods, the scene in which the saint leaves his father and renounces his inheritance. It is perhaps surprising that this should be chosen as the theme for the mortuary chapel of a rich banker, but there were other bankers who considered the theme of poverty in response to God's call suitable for their funeral monuments - an example is Giotto's St Francis cycle in the Bardi Chapel, which was also commissioned by a banker.
The young St Francis renounced the world by laying aside his expensive clothes and placing himself naked into the care of the Church. A churchman is taking him into protection under his cloak - the same gesture used by a Madonna of Mercy. Spectators are refraining the horrified father carrying his son's clothes across his arm.
It should be noted that the stories, which are higher up and further from view, were probably left to his assistants: the Renunciation of Worldly Goods, the Test of Fire before the Sultan and the Stigmata. But even here the master's hand and eye return: in a facial expression, in the delicacy of certain effects of light, in a distant landscape, or in some ecstatic abandonment.
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