Interment of Saint Francis

Pseudo Jacopino di Francesco, a Bolognese painter active in the mid-fourteenth century whose conventional name reflects his stylistic proximity to Jacopino di Francesco, created this Interment of Saint Francis around 1350. The scene depicts the burial of Saint Francis of Assisi, a subject central to Franciscan devotional art that emphasized the saint's Christlike humility in death. Now at the Vatican Museums, this panel reflects the important Bolognese contribution to Trecento painting and the powerful influence of the Franciscan order on Gothic artistic production.

Executed in egg tempera and gold leaf on panel, this narrative scene displays the Bolognese school's distinctive approach combining Giottesque spatial construction with expressive, somewhat angular figure types. The interment scene is composed with clustered mourning friars around the body of Saint Francis, their grief conveyed through emphatic gesture and posture.