Saint Francis Kneeling in Meditation
Domenico Theotokópoulos, called El Greco (Doménikos Theotokópoulos; Greek, active in Spain, 1541–1614)
c. 1595–c. 1600
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 92 × 74 cm (36 3/16 × 24 1/8 in.); Framed: 112.4 × 94.6 × 8.9 cm (44 1/4 × 37 1/4 × 3 1/2 in.)
- Culture
- Greece
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Credit line
- Robert A. Waller Memorial Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Saint Francis appears here surrounded by symbols associated with his sainthood. The book, for example, speaks to his devotional studies, and the skull is a reminder of the inevitability of death. The painting prompts the viewer to meditate upon the saint in the same way that he prays before the sculpture of Christ. At least a dozen other versions of this composition by El Greco exist, evidence of Francis’s tremendous popularity in Toledo, Spain, where he made his career.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
