St. Francis in Ecstasy
Giovanni Bellini
GIOVANNI BELLINI, c.1480. OIL ON PANEL.
St. Francis steps out into the sun and prepares himself to transcend from his mortal self. Golden rays shine down on him as he receives stigmata, the wounds of crucifixion on your hands and feet, and in doing so becomes something closer to the divine. Bellini, the revolutionary of the Venetian Renaissance, was from a family of artists and, by the time this work was painted, was himself well established and well-trained, with a growing reputation as an artist of singular talent. So it is with total knowledge of conventions that Bellini chooses to break them. Iconographic motifs that appear across religious works and are used as a sort of codex to identify figures by the objects that appear around them or physical characteristics that are exaggerated are totally ignored in Bellini’s representation. Instead, he paints a masterful landscape, worthy of the glory of the divine, and places St. Francis alone, with no angels or heavenly representatives to aide him in his transform, in its beauty.