'St Francis beaten by his Father', by Arthur Boyd

'St Francis beaten by his Father', by Arthur Boyd

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This work by Arthur Boyd was acquired by the Art Gallery of South Australia in 1969 with funds from the Morgan Thomas Bequest. It depicts St Francis of Assisi being beaten by his father, who is known to have objected to Francis’ religious inclinations and specifically to have reprimanded him for selling cloth from his shop to fund church repairs. St Francis (Giovanni Francesco do Bernadone) was born in Assisi around 1181. After an adolescence spent learning his father’s cloth business and aspiring to be a noble knight, he received his religious calling in his twenties when he was praying at San Damiano and heard Christ telling him to repair the church. Following a dispute with his father after selling cloth to raise money for the task, Francis returned every stitch of clothing his father had ever given him and renounced his patrimony. He turned to a life of poverty and religious work. He founded the Franciscan Order, a religious order devoted to poverty, work and preaching, which was authorised by Pope Innocent III in 1210 and quickly grew in popularity from a few followers to a large network of Franciscan preachers and missionaries (administered by Cardinal Ugolini, later Pope Gregory IX) and an enclosed order for women, The Poor Clares. In 1224 St Francis received the stigmata. He died in 1226, and was pronounced a saint only two years later by Pope Gregory IX.

Arthur Boyd, 1920-1999

Art Gallery of South Australia: http://www.artgallery.sa.gov.au/agsa/home/

1965

Art Gallery of South Australia, with permission of the Bundanon Trust

Lithograph on Paper, 47.9cm x 60.3cm

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