Small, free show at the National Gallery is ‘enrapturing’ and ‘fascinating’
It has been argued that the Italian Renaissance was “ignited by a single spark in the form of one man”, said Harry Seymour on Air Mail: Saint Francis of Assisi. Born into wealth in Umbria around 1181, Francis experienced a vision that led him to swap his “lavish lifestyle” for one of “poverty and preaching”. He travelled widely across Italy and the Holy Land, establishing his Franciscan Order on “the pillars of penury, peace and environmentalism”. Some art historians suggest that the way Francis preached to the poor – in the Italian vernacular, stressing Christ’s humanity – led painters to favour “more realistic, less divine depictions of his body”, which laid the foundations for an artistic revolution.
