The Friar as medico: Picturing Leprosy, Institutional Care, and Franciscan Virtues in La Franceschina

The best-known illustration from La Franceschina, a late-fifteenth-century collection of Franciscan vitae, depicts St Francis of Assisi and three of his brethren caring for victims of leprosy in an institutional environment. The stated goal of Lo Specchio dell’Ordine Minore—the official title of La Franceschina—is to operate as a mirror for, or model of, ideal Franciscan behaviour. La Franceschina participated in a well-established tradition of Franciscan hagio-graphical writing, one that traced its origins to the lives of Francis written by Thomas of Celano and Bonaventure in the thirteenth century. While the various iterations of La Franceschina have received surprisingly little attention from art historians, the scene of the leprosarium from the Perugia manuscript is regularly reproduced as an illustration of late medieval medical care.