Saint Francis Expelling the Devils

Saint Francis Expelling the Devils by Giotto from around 1302 is part of the great cycle of frescoes in the Upper Basilica of San Francesco at Assisi. Giotto's revolutionary approach to narrative painting—with solid, volumetric figures in convincing architectural spaces—broke definitively with the flat, abstract style of Byzantine art and launched the Western tradition of naturalistic painting. The Gothic era in European painting (c.1200-1400) was dominated by devotional works on gold ground, combining Byzantine formalism with growing Gothic naturalism.

The solid, three-dimensional figures occupying a convincing architectural space demonstrate Giotto's revolutionary spatial conception, the expressive gestures and individualized faces creating narrative clarity unprecedented in medieval painting.