Stigmata of St Francis

The second scene of the St Francis cycle in the Sassetti Chapel is underneath the Renunciation on the left wall: The Stigmata of St Francis. This event, the most important in the saint's life, encouraged his followers to raise him to messianic heights, for the miracle of the stigmata was the climax of his imitation of Christ. It is noticeable that this central event is not depicted in a prominent location in the chapel. Within the individual scenes of the cycle Ghirlandaio follows the compositional structure of postures of the main figures in Giotto's work, still his compulsory model. But the background proves that the frescoes belong to a new artistic era.

At roughly the same time, in about 1485, a Florentine sculptor of the same age created this scene showing the stigmatization in marble for the pulpit of the Franciscan church of S. Croce in Florence: his name was Benedetto da Maiano, and he had, like Ghirlandaio, been commissioned by the wealthy banker Pietro Mellini to create a funeral monument in the form of a pulpit. The similarity between the two scenes is so great that one is forced to assume that one of the two artists copied the other in his own medium. The remaining scenes about St. Francis on Benedetto's pulpit are also in part comparable with Ghirlandaio's frescoes. This raises the question whether the sculptor was influenced by the painter, or the reverse, or whether both of them made use of the same models. Here the two artistic genres of painting and sculpture were competing with each other.

St Francis led his life entirely according to the example of Christ. Two years before his death in 1224, he was miraculously marked with the wounds of the crucified Christ. This climax in the saint's life took place on the slopes of the La Verna mountain, where seraphim appeared to him bearing a vision of the crucified Christ and he received the wounds produced by the nails and lance.

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.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 33 minutes): Michael Haydn: St Francis Mass