Specialists believe that there are as many as forty depictions of Saint Francis in the oeuvre of the 17th-century Spanish artist, Zurburán, either by the hand of the master or in collaboration with his assistants. There are several extant variations of this version, which shows the saint at three-quarters length, his face lost in the shadows of a pointed hood made of rough woolen cloth, his hands clasping a skull, the instrument of his meditation. Such severe depictions of the saint follow the idea established by El Greco, who often showed Saint Francis as an ascetic, living alone in the wilderness, even though Saint Francis was never known to have done so.

Zurburán, often thought of as the quintessential painter of Counter-Reformation Spain, devoted his art to the service of the Catholic Church, which remained his main source of patronage throughout his career. His success can be measured by the many monasteries in Seville and elsewhere in Spain for which he created large-scale decorations, typically representing the lives of various saints. The strength of his art, in contrast to the courtly style of Velázquez, who was his near contemporary, rested on its simplicity. His most moving images are single figures, often saints like this one, either fully absorbed in prayer or in ecstatic communion with God. In our painting, a theatrical use of light lends an almost sculptural feeling to the saint’s patched woolen habit, which, in its very rough simplicity, stands for Saint Francis’s rejection of worldly possessions. The saint’s isolation with God is emphasized by the anonymous, dark background, while his spiritual enlightenment is metaphorically represented by the light that seems to emanate from the intensity of his absorptive state.