(slideshow) The sacred art of Caravaggio

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Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy (1595)

Believed to be the first religious work by Caravaggio, this depiction of St. Francis of Assisi was realized after a commission by Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte. It depicts a moving scene from St. Francis' life as recounted by one of his companions, Brother Leo. When Francis left the city for the wild to pray, he had a vision of a seraph -- one of the six-winged angels that surround the throne of God -- who imprinted Francis’s own body with the stigmata of Christ's wounds, leaving him with a sense of joy, grief and ecstasy.

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