This paper addresses the affective and curative potential of late medieval Franciscan art. In particular, it examines images of Christian suffering and Franciscan healing miracles painted by Giotto’s workshop in circa 1305-11 in the lower north transept of San Francesco at Assisi. These paintings were part of a renovation of the lower church undertaken to provide pilgrims with greater access to the entombed body of St. Francis in the adjacent crossing. The frescoes will be interpreted relative to a recently discovered early fourteenth-century medical theory of compassion. It will be argued that, according to this medical theory, the compassion-provoking images in the lower north transept of San Francesco in Assisi had the potential to psychologically transform the pilgrim and prepare them to encounter the tomb of St. Francis by making them receptive to the miraculous healing power of St. Francis’s stigmatized body.

This paper investigates the role of the city view in works of art commissioned by Renaissance worshippers to invoke heavenly assistance against bubonic plague. Existing topographic conventions in the visual arts—donors offering buildings to God and their titulars, and patron saints holding miniaturised models of towns under their protection—were creatively transformed to serve the needs of individuals and communities faced with the constant threat of plague. Prophylactic purpose endowed the inscription of place with particular urgency, providing a focal point of civic solidarity in times of crisis, forging ties of dependence and obligation between earth and heaven, and ensuring that the solicited celestial defense was directed towards the correct target. Above all, the need for reassurance against recurrent epidemics propelled a more demonstrative and performative representation of place, whereby the static town model was activated, narrativised and personalised as protagonist in a drama of salvation from the plague.

Saints were frequently attributed with special therapeutic powers as healers, sometimes explained by historians as elements of folklore. By contrast, the interesting path leading to a specialization – with the disease sometimes even assuming the name of the saint – is an intrinsic part of the history of cults and their diffusion through the network of shrines. In this respect, special therapeutic powers can be derived from the different thaumaturgical practices and the various depictions of sanctity and the disease itself. As the latter is often interpreted by historiographers using different epistemological criteria from those adopted in the past, the characteristics of the thaumaturgical cult in question can sometimes be misunderstood. The aim of this contribution is to demonstrate the complex nature of the relationship between healing saints and diseases by analysing a variety of images and textual sources – not only hagiographies – that refer to the Renaissance period.