St. Francis of Assisi died of wounds on both his hands.

Art historians usually attribute the Flemish artist Jan van Eyck to the two unsigned paintings that Saint Francis of Assisi received.There is a significant difference in size of the panels.There are two small paintings, one in the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the other in a gallery in Italy.The inventory of Adornes of Bruges's will shows that he may have owned both panels.

The paintings show a famous incident from the life of Saint Francis of Assisi, who is shown kneeling by a rock as he receives the stigmata of the crucified Christ on his hands and soles of his feet.There are rock formations and a panoramic landscape behind him.The treatment of Francis is the first of its kind in northern Renaissance art.

The style and quality of the panels are the main reasons why the works are attributed to van Eyck.The Museo del Prado in Madrid has a third version that is weaker and strays significantly in tone and design.From the 19th to the 20th century, most scholars attributed the two versions to a follower of van Eyck's work.Between 1983 and 1989 the paintings were extensively restored and cleaned.The Italian panel of the Philadelphia painting has underdrawings of a quality that is thought to have come from van Eyck and the wood panel comes from the same tree.The paintings were displayed in an exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1998.Both were painted by the same person.

The Adornes family may have owned the paintings.In 1860, a copy of a will written in 1470 by a member of one of the leading families was found.Adornes gave his two daughters paintings by van Eyck when he left for Jerusalem.He described it as a portrait of St Francis made by the hand of Jan van Eyck.[5]

The paintings may have come from his father or uncle, who went to Jerusalem on pilgrimage around 50 years earlier.The Jerusalem chapel, a replica of Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre, was funded by the Adornes brothers.The Eyckian The Three Marys at the Tomb may have been commissioned to commemorate a successful pilgrimage.The small painting was prepared as a portable devotional work to bring on pilgrimage.Philip the Good kept an altarpiece for travelling and was often the owner of private devotional pieces.Philip had van Eyck paint two identical betrothal portraits of Isabella of Portugal in 1428 to ensure one survived the trip from Portugal, which may have set a precedent for other art patrons.The smaller painting was seen in Italy, particularly in Florence, and was widely copied.In the early 1470s, Giovanni Bellini, Filippino Lippi, Verrochio, and Sandro Botticelli produced variations of St Francis receiving the stigmata that included motifs from van Eyck's version, especially in the rendering of the rocky background.[6]

The connection between the paintings and the Adornes will was drawn by W. H. J. Weale in 1886.The Philadelphia painting was bought by William Court, 1st Baron Heytesbury.At that time, it was thought to be by Drer, but in 1856 the art historian attributed it to van Eyck.Heytesbury sold it to a dealer in 1894 and a month later the Philadelphia collector bought it.He bequeathed his art collection to Philadelphia in 1917.[7]

The mayor of a nearby town acquired the painting in the 19th century.A professor in the province of Alessandria bought it from a former nun.The nun is thought to have possessed it early in the 19th century during the dissolution of convents under Napoleon.There is no evidence that the Adornes family owned property in Alessandria or that a nun owned the painting three centuries after the death of van Eyck St Francis.[9]

During her tenure, she conducted technical investigations that resulted in worldwide collaborations and publications.In 1998 there was an exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.There were a few paintings and manuscript leaves in the exhibition.The two attributed to the master are from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and Saint Barbara.Two Saint Christopher's, one in Philadelphia and the other in the Louvre, are considered to be by workshop members.The John the Baptist in the Landscape was thought to be by van Eyck followers.The Philadelphia and Turin Saint Francis paintings were on display for the first time since the 15th century.There are no comments at this time.

A reconstructed red vermilion border surrounds the Philadelphia panel, which is similar to contemporary illuminated manuscripts.The viewer looks through a window into the landscape.The image is 12.7 by 14.6 cm and the parchment is 12.9 by 15.2 cm.There are five wood supports underneath, and the image is framed by four smaller pieces added at a later date.The parchment is thick and has a thin layer of primer.The wooden frames were painted with a thick layer of white.There were particles of gold leaf on the lower border.The panel is painted on two oak panels with a band of cloth on a ground of chalk and animal glue.[15]

Saint Francis of Assisi kneels by a rock as he receives the stigmata that were to stay on his body until his death.The composition is similar to Giotto's work, but more grounded in reality.The design is mostly faithful to the original Franciscan texts, but Francis does not lean towards Christ.[21]

The attention to his face gives it the quality of a portrait such as van Eyck's portrait of Cardinal Niccol Albergati.The head and face are very detailed.Francis is in his mid-thirties and has stubble on his face.He is presented as a highly intelligent and passive person.He is given a complex and inscrutable expression.He kneels on a bed of flowers, and his robe and folded drape have a choppy and overflowing feel.His lower limbs seem disconnected, positioned in an anti-naturalistic manner, giving the impression that he is levitating.[23]

Francis's feet are placed too high above the rest of his body, making them look like a foreign body according to Till-Holger Borchert.Borchert draws a similarity to two works accepted as van Eyck originals, but others have taken this as an indication of a less experienced and weaker workshop painter.The prophets kneel in a similar way in the "Adoration of the Mystic Lamb of God" panel.Although his feet are not visible, the donor in Madonna of Chancellor Rolin is in a similar pose.Joseph Rishel of the Philadelphia Museum of Art believes that the contortion of Francis's feet is necessary to show both wounds in the painting.[23]

The wounds on Francis's hands and feet are realistic and not overly dramatic.The representation of Christ in the guise of a seraph with three pairs of wings is an unusual element for van Eyck.According to several art historians, Francis looks straight ahead and is unaffected by the event.Holland said that it appeared as if Christ's vision was somehow aural rather than visual experience, and thatFrancis was holding himself still to catch its distant sound.[2]

Brother Leo is Francis's secretary and confessor.He is dressed in sombre colors and rendered in a more compact manner than Francis; crouching in the far right of the panel.His form is very large and geometric.The continuity between the Order's founder and his successors can be seen in the curve of his cord belt.Although he appears to be resting or asleep, his posture seems to indicate mourning.[2]

Nature is an important part of van Eyck's works.The landscapes may look beautiful, but they are in fact quite oblivious to the sacred action in the foreground.The hallmark of open vistas is believed to be by Katherine Luber.The lower-right wing of the Ghent Altarpiece has a similar resolution to the Francis paintings, where the painter places rocks in the mid-ground to solve the problem of how to transition from foreground to background.[25]

The robes of the saints echo in the rocks and trees.The figures are isolated against the grandeur of nature and bustling human life by the broad sweep of the mountains and city.Behind the figures a panoramic mountain landscape soars to the sky, while the mid-ground contains a variety of rocks and spikes.As with the New York Crucifixion and Last Judgement diptych, the mountains are capped with snow, which van Eyck may have seen during his visits to Italy and Spain, where he crossed the Alps and Pyrenees.[28]

The rock formations are detailed in the paintings.The details, colors, texture, and morphologies in Van Eyck's rendering of rocks yield a plethora of scientifically accurate information despite the early to mid-15th century date.Four different rock types were identified by him.There are limestone boulders in the foreground.There is an identifiable shell that is painted in a dark reddish brown.There is a sequence behind them.The rock is far away from a pair of peaks.[28]

The level of observed and precise detail found in the background has been remarked on by art history and geology specialists.The mid-ground contains a boulder with a crescent-shaped form that could only have arisen from the rock face.Another boulder has loops.Some of the boulders may have been upturned from their original orientation by the fossilised shells.The fossils are similar to present-day bivalvia or brachiopods.[29]

The landscape shows a Flemish city.In New York, some buildings and landmarks can be identified with Jerusalem.It closely resembles the background of the Rolin panel, which has undergone much deeper attention from scholars, with several identifications made with structures in Jerusalem.There are people and animals in the city walls, but they are not visible under magnification.The shadow of a boat is reflected in the water.The water scenes in the "Turin-Milan Hours" require a considerable degree of artistry, as evidenced by the reflective water surfaces, which he seems to have mastered early.Plants consist of tiny foreground flowers, larger mid-ground grasses, and background bushes and trees.The small carpet of white flowers in the foreground is similar to the central panel of the Ghent Altarpiece.[35]

The Franciscan Order had a strong following by the 15th century and attracted women and men to local lay confraternities.St Francis was often taken to holy sites in Spain and Jerusalem as a result of his association with pilgrimages.He was revered for his pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1219 and by the 15th century the Franciscans were responsible for maintaining the holy sites in Jerusalem.[37]

In imitation of Christ, St Francis lived austerely.He took vows of poverty, charity and chastity.He experienced a mystical vision at La Verna.Francis had a vision in which he saw a man with six wings and was standing above him with his hands outstretched.Two wings were lifted above his head, and two were spread ready for flight.Francis was completely amazed when he saw this.He didn't know what this vision might mean.As he meditated, marks of nails appeared on his hands and feet, and his right side was scarred as if it had been pierced by a nail.The medieval observer sees the stigmata as Francis's complete absorption in the vision of the seraph.40

Francis is in profile, kneeling, meditating quietly, facing away from the crucified seraph in the Philadelphia and Turin paintings.The dramatic pose and rays of light were eliminated by Van Eyck.Perhaps the wounds on the soles of the feet were intended to be concealed because the painting shows Francis wearing sandals.Panofsky argued against the Attribution to van Eyck on the basis of the somewhat arcane iconography.The imagery is typical of van Eyck's medieval view of mystical and visionary experience.[42]

The setting and landscape of Van Eyck were innovative.St Francis kneels in a detailed countryside, perhaps a specific spot around La Verna in the Italian Apennines, where striated sandstone is commonly found.The setting is remote.St Francis appears to stare beyond the vision to the rocks, seemingly unaffected, a common Eyckian device to illustrate a mystical vision.In his Madonna of Chancellor Rolin, it is difficult to tell if the location is Mary's throne-room or if she is just an angel in the chamber.[42]

Each sleeping figure is given an equal size.Surrounded by barren rocks, he faces away from the seraph, his feet positioned near a small stream, which signifies redemption or salvation.Plants, a river valley and a cityscape are on Francis's left.For van Eyck, a mystical vision had to be presented with great subtlety, and that in these paintings he captures the event perfectly, because Francis is shown as he is said to have reacted to the vision.[45]

The panels are in good shape.The Philadelphia version has more prominent colors.Roger Fry restored it in 1906 with overpaint removed.Fry was the Curator of Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum and did restorations despite not having formal training.He thought the Turin version was a duplicate of the work attributed to van Eyck.His removal of a section at the top revealed a red border, and he wrote that van Eyck had thought it was a miniature in oil on panel.When it came to me, the panel was larger at the top and the sky was dull, which made the owner not appreciate the compressed composition of the original.There was a crowd of small white-cloud like forms in the sky.His restoration removed more than 10 centimetres; before and after it, it was 24 cm 16 cm.48

Between 1983 and 1989 further preservation was done using a stereo microscope.The varnish that had turned brown as well as layers of old fillers were removed by restorers.They stripped paint additions from the mountain peaks and the area around Francis's tonsure.An X was scratched into the original paint on the upper right stones after the removal of overpainting.The removal of the underlying paint is in a very good condition.[49]

The panel has been damaged by overpainting and cracking.The paint on the reverse is very old.The panel underwent three restorations in the 20th century.Overpainting and repairs to Francis's tonsure and areas of vegetation between the two figures were done in 1952.There was an inscription that was lost on a rock next to the seraph-Christ.A fixing agent was applied to prevent cracking and Francis's tonsure was painted again in 1970.50

The wooden panels were restored a third time in 1982.Raking light showed that modern varnishes had yellowed.The snow-capped mountains and birds of prey on the upper left were uncovered when paint from earlier restorations was removed.The unusual positioning of Francis's tonsure and his feet was found to be a source of confusion in previous restorations.50

In the study of Early Netherlandish art, research in the late 19th century led to one of the thorniest conundrums, as efforts were made to establish authorship and date the panels in terms of precedence.The panels are not signed nor dated, and have proved difficult to attribute.One of the most important factors in attributing an old master painting is the approximate date of completion.The Philadelphia panel's growth rings were dated to between 1225 and 1307.It was established that the board was cut from the same tree as the wood of two panels by van Eyck.There are tree-rings that were developed between 1205 and 1383.The felling date of the sapwood is thought to be around 1320.Any of the paintings could have begun around 1408, assuming 10 years of seasoning before use.The Turin version is painted on two boards.The rings from board I and board II are from the same time period.[52]

Ludwig von Baldass suggested a date early in van Eyck's career, based on the perceived "faulty proportions" of the figures.A young and relatively inexperienced painter is to blame for the unusual positioning.The close observation of nature reveals Jan's hand, as he notes how the landscape and individual elements are similar to the style of Hubert van Eyck.During the time when van Eyck finished the Ghent Altarpiece, Luber suggests a later date.She believes that van Eyck's employer sent him to Portugal in the late 1420s and that he would have been unavailable for a commission until his return in 1430The return from pilgrimage late in the 1420s of the Adornes brothers suggests a completion date of about 1430 for the two paintings.[55]

There is a free copy in the Prado.This is 47 x 36 cm and is in a vertical format.The foreground rocks extended higher after a large tree was added at the left.The world landscape style of Joachim Patinir is reflected in the landscape, which is somewhat different.The jagged peaks in the distance have been added to and altered to Patinir's trademark depiction of the distinctive landscape of Dinant.The panel was attributed to a "Master of Hoogstraeten", an anonymous follower of Quentin Massys.The awkwardness of the figures has been corrected, the placement of his feet and knees made more rational, but St Francis stares at the apparition.A copy of the Turin version was placed in Brussels in the 1500's.[58]