Artists throughout the centuries have been inspired by Saint Francis of Assisi, including Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. One of the artist’s early masterpieces is “Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy,” held in the collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Connecticut. This is the artist’s first known religious canvas and one of the…

Around 1635, Spanish artist Francisco de Zurbarán painted “Saint Francis in Meditation,” a striking life-size portrait of Francis kneeling in prayer and gazing up to God in adoration.  Zurbarán made Francis’s faith palpable by painting Francis the man, without the fanfare of his miracles. Francis wears the habit worn by the friars of the Capuchin…

The reputation of St. Francis of Assisi as a nature lover often eclipses his identity as a writer in modern culture, and yet he is among the principal figures in Italian literature. In his youth, St. Francis greatly admired the courtly love poetry and lifestyle of the troubadours; in his maturity, Francis embraced the title…

The Middle Ages were coming to an end. Its art presented holy beings in a golden, heavenly realm. The Renaissance then burst onto the scene, and it was time for great art to appear on earth, followed by exciting discoveries in science. Renaissance artists depicted spiritual figures, but they placed them in natural settings and…

The former gold-mining town of Brazil’s Ouro Preto is rich in Portuguese architectural treasures. The remote and rugged hillside town was built in the late 17th century, after gold was discovered in the region in 1693. At the height of the region’s gold rush, 60 percent of the world’s gold came from Ouro Preto, but by…