From Botticelli to Marvel: why artists love St Francis

‘A small, black, repulsive picture’ is not how most people today would describe Zurbaran’s haunting painting of ‘Saint Francis in Meditation’ (1635-9) in the National Gallery. But that was how one Protestant critic of its acquisition in 1853 described this image of an Italian saint satirised three centuries earlier by the German Lutheran cleric Erasmus Alber in his Koran of the Franciscans.

Alber chose his title advisedly, for one of this peacemaking saint’s legendary acts of diplomacy was initiating an interfaith dialogue with the Muslim Sultan of Egypt, al-Malik al-Kamil. In 1219, so the story goes, Francis crossed to Damietta, then under siege by troops of the Fifth Crusade, slipped unarmed into the city and was arrested and brought before the Sultan. Received with courtesy, he began preaching the Gospel but seeing that his arguments were getting nowhere he proposed a trial by fire with the local imams.

The Sultan, afraid of the outcome, is said to have refused, but in his Borgo San Sepolcro altarpiece the 15th-century Sienese artist Sassetta shows Francis boldly stepping into the flames. Sassetta’s vivid narrative cycle of the life of Francis is another highlight of the national collection, and together with Zurbaran’s painting and Botticelli’s ‘Saint Francis of Assisi with Angels’ (c.1475-80) it sparked the idea of mounting an exhibition devoted to the saint. Co-curated by the gallery’s Catholic half-Italian director Gabriele Finaldi, the show will have Erasmus Alber spinning in his grave, but Finaldi has faith that the man hailed by D’Annunzio as ‘the most Italian of saints’ and by Mussolini as ‘the most saintly of Italians’ appeals across national and religious boundaries. 

Francis has proven pulling power. In 1216, he persuaded Pope Honorius III to grant a plenary indulgence – normally reserved for such holy sites as Rome and Jerusalem – to pilgrims to the humble chapel at Portiuncula outside Assisi where he received his calling.