Redefining the Altarpiece in Renaissance Italy: Giotto's Stigmatization of Saint Francis and its Pisan Context

Despite its autograph status and close iconographic relationship with the Saint Francis cycle at Assisi, Giotto's large panel of the Sigmatization in the Louvre occupies a marginal place in the literature on the artist. The painting, brought to Paris by Napoleon, has a secure provenance from San Francisco, Pisa, and has conventionally been identified as an altarpiece for a side chapel in that church. This article, based on extensive new archival research, establishes that the Sigmatization was not an altarpiece. Instead, there are strong arguments for it having been elevated above a choir screen or beam in the nave of San Francesco. As well as transforming our understanding of Giotto's panel and its intended function, these findings have significant implications for broader study of early Italian panel painting, challenging the traditional bias towards the altarpiece as the most dynamic genre of ecclesiastical image in the decades around 1300.