Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata (1586): Art, History and Details

Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata (1586) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Agostino Carracci (Italian, 1557–1602).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Italian artist Agostino Carracci combined Marcantonio Raimondi’s system for creating light and shadow with Cornelis Cort’s recent innovation—the swelled, crossed line—to convey the volume, light, and drama of late Renaissance art. Subjects like Saint Francis, who receives Christ’s stigmata (wounds of the Crucifixion) amid a lush landscape in this print, were popular at the time. To create the rock face, Agostino engraved his marks densely and in organized sections. He added swelled, crossed lines to animate the formation and distinguish it from the figure of the saint. Agostino’s techniques greatly influenced engravers seeking ways to replicate the rich, dark contrasts of paintings.

Object facts

• Title: Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata
• Date: 1586
• Creator attribution: Agostino Carracci (Italian, 1557–1602)
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Print
• Technique: engraving
• Dimensions: Sheet: 45.8 x 31.5 cm (18 1/16 x 12 3/8 in.)
• Collection: PR - Engraving
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1973.8

Collection credit

James Parmelee Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• “The Year in Review for 1973.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 61, no. 2 (February 1974): 31–78.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.