The “sign” of St Francis

To mark the 800th anniversary of the death of St Francis of Assisi, a key figure in the history of the Church, the development of the Italian language and literature, as well as the’art and the culture, the Venerable Ambrosian Library offers an evocative artistic and spiritual journey. Curated by Marco Navoni e Francesco Braschi, the exhibition aims to highlight the Saint’s spiritual legacy through works from its vast collection. The exhibition itinerary of the Art Gallery winds its way through four paintings devoted to iconographic portraits of the Poverello and precious drawings exhibited to the public for the first time in the Rooms 2 and 3, ending at the famous Federiciana Hall with a selection of seven engravings. Among the most valuable artefacts, a detailed drawing taken from the Resta Code, which depicts the saint’s death, surrounded by the devotion of his friars and the faithful. The artistic depiction is interwoven with the biographical account: the saint, by then almost blind and ravaged by illness, chose to die naked on the bare earth near the Porziuncola (currently housed in the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli a Assisi), a place symbolic of the founding of the Franciscan Order, requesting the reading of the The Gospel of John and the performance of the The Canticle of the Creatures. The experience is rounded off by a multimedia section featuring videos of further masterpieces on the same theme.