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| Giovanni Bellini, St. Francis, c. 1430 (image from Web Gallery of Art) |
According to Sebastian Smee, this painting of St. Francis of Assisi "is regarded by many as the most beautiful painting in America" (it is in the Frick Collection in New York). The painting shows the saint in a Tuscan setting that resembles the mountain where he fasted for 40 days, but plants and animals (including a donkey, a heron, a rabbit, and sheep) are present throughout the work. Smee observed that this masterpiece has "a minty freshness, as of vegetable patches at dawn or tulips breaking through frost, and on a spiritual level, a sense of dazzling profusion and potential, like the heart of a person at morning prayer."
