Episode of Series “Palettes”.
Commissioned in 1437, as a tribute to a Franciscan monk, the altarpiece for the church of San Francesco was to take seven years to complete. Sassetta was paid the highest sum for its time for a painted work. In the sixteenth century the painting was dismantled and dispersed, so that today twenty six fragments are dispersed throughout ten museums around the world, and some have disappeared. The film looks at the genre of the medieval altarpiece, and paintings of St. Francis as well as the innovative techniques that Sassetta used.