Kneeling before a rock bearing a skull and a devotional volume, St. Francis clasps his hands and looks up in wonder at an apparition of Christ on the Cross. This painting depicts a lesser-known episode late in the life of the saint. The 14th-century text known as the Fioretti di San Francesco (Little Flowers of St. Francis) tells how St. Francis had withdrawn to a hut on Mount Verna in August 1224, leaving the friars of the order at the hermitage and oratory Count Orlando of Chiusi had built for them nearby. One evening in September, Brother Leo, who attended to him, found him in the moonlit woods praying to a ball of fire that had tumbled down from the sky. It was an apparition of the Lord. Here, the apparition is more explicitly defined as Christ on the Cross, cast in silhouette by the surrounding glow. Francis, in his long rough-woven robe, looks up in great earnestness, his face gaunt, his eyes wide and his lips parted to speak. Trees rise behind him, and a vista to the right opens up to distant mountains and the monastery buildings. Francis’s hand clearly shows the stigmata he received just after the apparition.