Saint Francis before the Pope (The Approval of the Franciscan Rule)

Spinello Aretino · 1390–1400

Medium

Tempera on panel

Original size

88.7 × 62.9 cm (34 7/8 × 24 3/4 in.); Framed: 105.4 × 79.4 cm (41 1/2 × 31 1/4 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Medieval

This luminous narrative panel captures one of the founding moments of the Franciscan order — the humble Francis of Assisi kneeling before Pope Innocent III to receive approval for his new rule of life. Spinello Aretino was among the most accomplished painters working in late fourteenth-century Tuscany, bridging the monumental tradition of Giotto with the decorative refinement emerging in Florentine workshops. His figures carry a quiet physical solidity unusual for the period, and his use of gold leaf and earth-toned tempera gives scenes like this one a warm, icon-like gravity. The careful arrangement of clerics and attendants around the central exchange reveals a painter equally comfortable with crowd composition as with intimate devotional imagery. Spinello produced several fresco cycles depicting the life of Saint Francis, making him one of the most committed interpreters of Franciscan narrative in his generation — a body of work that helped cement the visual language surrounding the saint well into the Renaissance. This hand-painted oil reproduction faithfully translates Spinello's original tempera work into oil on canvas, preserving the deliberate stillness of his figures, the warm palette, and the ceremonial weight of a scene that shaped Western religious history.