Giovanni Bellini

Saint Francis in the Desert, painted by the Venetian master Giovanni Bellini in the years around 1480. It illustrates the moment in Christian legend when God honored Saint Francis of Assisi with the stigmata, a moment that Bellini pictures in terms of immaterial light touching down on human flesh. Bellini’s Saint Francis is also one of the first Italian pictures to take full advantage of how such immaterial light could be captured in the very material medium of oil paint.