Giovanni Bellini’s Saint Francis in the Desert
A treasure of the Frick Collection is Giovanni Bellini’s Saint Francis. It measures roughly four feet square and depicts the saint alone in a rocky landscape. The work was long thought to represent Saint Francis receiving the stigmata, but recent cleaning and technical examinations have refocused scholarly attention on the painting, with the result that it has been given the more neutral title, Saint Francis in the Desert. Bellini (1430–1516), a master of the early Venetian Renaissance, was a learned and accomplished painter with close ties to the Franciscans in Venice and its surroundings.
Bellini was also technically proficient. In this painting he uses a mix of hard-edged, linear tempera for clarity and an overlay of oil glazing, recently invented by the Flemish painters, which infuses the painting with a golden atmospheric glow. Along with the oil technique, Bellini also adopted the Flemish painters’ meticulous rendering of natural objects—plants, animals, household goods—with an underlying resonance of implied symbolism. The picture is teeming with details, none of them accidental. How are we to make coherent sense of them all and read the painting as the artist intended?
Gazing into the Light
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Mary Elizabeth Podles is the retired curator of Renaissance and Baroque art at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. She and her husband Leon, a Touchstone senior editor, have six children and live in Baltimore, Maryland.
• Not a subscriber or wish to renew your subscription? Subscribe to Touchstone today for full online access. Over 30 years of publishing!
personal subscriptions
Purchase Print &
Online Subscription
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives including pdf downloads for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
gift subscriptions
GIVE Print &
Online Subscription
Give six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for the reduced rate of $29.95. That's only $2.50 per month!
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
kindle subscription
OR get a subscription to Touchstone to read on your Kindle for only $1.99 per month! (This option is KINDLE ONLY and does not include either print or online.)
Your subscription goes a long way to ensure that Touchstone is able to continue its mission of publishing quality Christian articles and commentary.
more on art from the online archives
33.2—March/April 2020
An Architectural Sign of Mere Christianity by Michael Ward
32.4—July/August 2019
on Single-Mindedness in Durer's Ritter, Tod, und Teufel by Anthony Costello
more from the online archives
33.1—January/February 2020
on a Saint's Charism That Cures Toxic Perfectionism by Colleen Carroll Campbell
26.1—Jan/Feb 2013
Manly Chastity, Hedonism & the Law of Non-contradiction by Anthony Esolen
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
