Saint Francis in Ecstasy

Francis steps barefoot from his rocky hermitage, arms loosening, face lifted toward a light pouring in from the left, while the whole landscape - a laurel bending toward him, a donkey, a heron, a far hilltop town - seems to hold its breath. Traditionally his stigmatization on Monte La Verna, the remote Tuscan mountain where Francis withdrew to pray, the scene shows no seraph and barely the wounds; Bellini gives not a dramatic vision but a quiet communion with a world soaked in divine presence. The grapevine over his desk, the skull, the water trickling from the rock are painted with loving exactness. Few pictures make holiness feel so much like daylight.