Bishop Saint and Saint Francis of Assisi

Francesco di Andrea Anguilla's Bishop Saint and Saint Francis of Assisi, dated 1434 and now in the Birmingham Museum of Art, is a panel from a polyptych altarpiece by a minor Florentine painter of the early fifteenth century. The pairing of a bishop saint — possibly Saint Zenobius, patron of Florence — with Saint Francis of Assisi was a common combination in Tuscan altarpieces of the period, combining civic and Franciscan patronage in a single commission. Anguilla represents the conservative strand of Florentine painting that continued the late Gothic tradition while the revolutionary developments of Masaccio, Donatello, and Brunelleschi were transforming the city's artistic culture.

Anguilla employs a gold ground with the warm, softly modeled figure style of the late Florentine Gothic. The bishop saint is distinguished by his vestments and mitre, Francis by his brown habit and stigmata. Both figures are rendered with the clear legibility and devotional calm appropriate to altarpiece saints.