A drawing of St Francis kneeling to the left with his head turned upwards and slightly to the right as he gazes heavenward. His hands are crossed upon his chest, and he has a skull on the ground before him, and vegetation behind him. The Franciscan Order was one of the most prominent monastic orders in seventeenth-century Italy (Castiglione’s brother Paolo was a friar in the Order), and depictions of St Francis receiving the stigmata and other Franciscan saints in their devotions were common throughout the Catholic world. Castiglione’s series of studies of Franciscan saints (RCIN 903961, 903978, 903980, 904006, 904007) approach the status of a painting more closely than any other of his works on paper.