Paysage avec la stigmatisation de saint François

La Hyre's Landscape with the Stigmatization of Saint Francis integrates religious narrative and ideal landscape in the manner that French painters learned partly from Poussin and partly from the Roman landscape tradition. Saint Francis receiving the stigmata in a wild natural setting was a popular subject — the physical encounter with the sacred in nature appealed deeply to Counter-Reformation devotion. La Hyre gives the event a characteristically French elegance, softening the drama into a lyrical scene of spiritual illumination.

Saint Francis kneels in an open woodland clearing, arms extended, bathed in light from above. La Hyre structures the landscape in receding planes of warm and cool tones. The natural setting is rendered with careful attention to foliage textures and soft atmospheric light.