The Optics of St Francis’s Stigmatization

Iconography and Theories of Seeing

Abstract

This article examines the changing iconographical conventions representing Francis’s stigmatization and explores how they might be understood in the context of contemporary intellectual trends within the Franciscan order. The evolving ray imagery in visual representations of the stigmatization can be productively interpreted through theories of the visual process, especially perspectiva, which was based on Arabic optical theory and initially adopted in the Latin West by English Franciscans. Latin articulations of perspectiva were compatible with hagiographical accounts of Francis’s stigmatization, especially Bonaventure’s, and therefore provided the Franciscan order with a more precise language and set of theories to explore how to visually represent the stigmata being impressed on Francis’s body. Both visual processes and Francis’s stigmatization can be understood as specific examples of the ‘multiplication of species’ model. The stigmatization was therefore depicted as comprehensible through its consistency with natural processes of causation. This article explicitly connects the history of optical science with the history of Franciscan iconography and hagiography to demonstrate the richness and complexity of the interactions between different areas of Franciscan knowledge production and dissemination.