Stitches and Patches: The Franciscan Habit in an Engraving by Lucas Vorsterman

The National Gallery of Victoria holds a number of prints from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that show Saint Francis of Assisi (d. 1226) as the main subject or protagonist, or as one of a number of saints. One of these is an early seventeenth-century engraving by Lucas Vorsterman (1595–1675) catalogued as The Death of Saint Francis, after a painting by the Antwerp Italianist painter Gerard Seghers (1591–1651) (fig. 1). The painting on which the engraving is based is now in the collection of the Louvre and has been dated to between 1620 and 1624. A pen-and-ink drawing by Seghers, related to the engraving, is in the Fondation Custodia in Paris. Other prints are held by the Wellcome Trust Collection (London), the Kaluga Regional Art Museum (Russia), and the Albertina (Vienna) among others. The dedicatory inscription at the bottom of the engraving is to Paul van Halmalus (c. 1562–1648), an Antwerp senator (‘Nobili vivo D. Paulo Halmalio Senatori Antuerpensi, sculptoriae artis amatori summo, Adfectissimus sui Lucas Vorsterman consecrabat’), a portrait of whom was included in Anthony van Dyck’s ‘Iconography’. The wording of the dedication shows that Vorsterman held Halmalus in great esteem as a connoisseur of engravings. Below this, the origin of the composition is given: ‘G. Seghers invent.’. In larger lettering directly below the image is the text ‘Vivo autem, iam non ego, vivit vero in me Christus’ (I no longer live, but Christ lives in me), from Paul’s letter to the Galatians 2:20 immediately following ‘Christo confixus sum cruci’ (I have been crucified in Christ). Francis had been represented with this text from the thirteenth century. It drew attention to him as one who suffered with and as Christ, as well as one who had received, miraculously, the wounds of Christ on the cross—the stigmata. However, the miraculous nature of Francis’s wounds is not the main focus of the composition. Only one of the five wounds is visible, that on the saint’s left hand. Rather, our attention is drawn to Francis’s state of collapse. The saint, who appears to have been kneeling, falls backward and is supported by two angels, while a third