San Francesco d'Assisi che riceve le stimmate

St Francis of Assisi had been dead about 70 years when Giotto painted this, and the order he founded was now one of the most powerful in Europe. The scene shows the moment on Mount La Verna in 1224 when Francis, at prayer, received the stigmata, the wounds of Christ, from a winged crucified figure in the sky. What was new was how Giotto told it. Instead of the stiff gold-ground holy figures of the older Byzantine manner, he gave Francis weight, a kneeling body, a face reacting to what he sees. The panel was made for the church of San Francesco in Pisa, and along the bottom Giotto signed it in Latin, the work of Florentine Giotto. Three smaller scenes from the saint's life run underneath it.