Saint Francis

Annibale Carracci painted this Saint Francis in Bologna around 1587, well before Rome and the fame that came with it. He was in his mid-twenties, just back from study trips to Parma, where he had looked hard at Correggio, and to Venice, where Veronese taught him about colour. That appetite for the real world shows on the saint's little rock shelf: a bleeding crucifix, a skull to keep death in mind, a few worn books. Look closer and there are thorns, and a lizard slipping among them, painted with the plain attention of someone who wanted things to look like themselves rather than like a graceful idea. The lizard is exactly the kind of small, observed detail that rarely found its way into a devotional picture of the time.