Artist
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff 1884 – 1976

About the work
Saint Francis’s features and his hands emerge from the darkness as though illuminated. His face is an assemblage of graphic, cubic shapes and harsh black-and-white contrasts. His deep-set eyes and his thin face bear witness to his decades of ascetic life. Francis of Assisi followed Christ’s example in the way he lived his life, aiming to adhere to vows of absolute poverty, chastity and charity. To make this imitation of Christ complete, he is said to have been given the latter’s stigmata. On this print Francis displays the stigma on his left, raised hand. The radiant light in the background underscores the symbolic power of the scene. Schmidt-Rottluff has lent the saint his own physiognomy and given him a high hairline and goatee. Jünger (Disciple; cat. no. 330) from the so-called Christus-Mappe also shares some of the artist’s physical features. This religious subject is a metaphor for existential questions, for moral and ethical standards and positions.

Catalog raisonné
Schapire H 243