Saint Francis

Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata is an oil painting on canvas by Peter Paul Rubens. It was originally produced as an altarpiece for the Franciscan Recollects Church in Ghent. The church also housed other works by Rubens, including St Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy and The Virgin Mary and Saint Francis Saving the World from Christ's Anger. In 1797 the painting was seized from Saint Peter's Abbey, Ghent to form part of a new 'Nationaal Museum', which opened to the public in 1802. It now hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent.

Created in 1610 during the 1600-1650 period, this work belongs firmly within the portrait tradition. Peter Paul Rubens worked at a moment when the rivalry between Catholic Baroque drama and Protestant restraint reshaped what a painting could mean. Every gesture, fabric, and gleam of light was decoded by contemporary viewers like a private language.

The physical object — Oil on panel, 99 × 78.8 cm (43 1/4 × 31 in.); Framed: 148 × 118.8 × 7.6 cm (58 1/4 × 46 3/4 × 3 in.) — carries its own history of handling and restoration. Peter Paul Rubens's brushwork here moves between exacting description and looser, more suggestive passages, a balance typical of Baroque studio practice.

Look closely and the painting opens up. Objects you might pass over — a folded letter, a half-drawn curtain, the angle of a glance — were placed to be read. Likeness was only part of the job; the painting also had to argue for the sitter's place in the world.

Housed at Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago, the painting has passed through the hands of collectors, dealers, and institutions before reaching public view — a provenance that is itself part of the object's story.

“A silence so complete it becomes its own witness.”