Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata

Battista di Biagio Sanguigni's Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata, dated around 1420 and now in the National Galleries Scotland, is a Florentine interpretation of the stigmatization of Francis — the moment in 1224 when the saint received the wounds of Christ while on Mount La Verna. Sanguigni was a minor Florentine painter working in the late Gothic tradition, and his version of the popular subject demonstrates how the iconography established by Giotto in the Bardi Chapel frescoes continued to shape Tuscan treatments of the scene a century later. The Edinburgh panel is a characteristic work of the conservative Florentine tradition that persisted alongside the revolutionary innovations of Masaccio.

Sanguigni employs the gold ground with the warm, softly modeled figure style of the late Florentine Gothic. Francis kneels in prayer as the crucified seraph appears above, rays connecting the wounds of each. The rocky landscape is schematic but provides a setting that grounds the supernatural event. Figure handling is competent and devotionally appropriate.