The Stigmatization of Saint Francis

In September 1224, on the mountain of La Verna in Tuscany, Francis of Assisi is said to have seen a seraph in the form of the crucified Christ, and to have come away bearing Christ's wounds in his hands, feet and side. Nearly three centuries later, around 1502, Cranach painted the moment in Vienna and set it in a northern wood. A tree trunk cuts through the front of the panel. Francis kneels beside it with both hands raised and his eyes wide open, while the winged figure hangs in the sky above him. His companion stays bent over with his head down. Behind them a small castle is mirrored in still water, with mountains in soft blue beyond. The Belvedere bought it in 1912 from a collector in Lemberg, today's Lviv, then a city of the same Habsburg empire.