In a scenario with a dark, barren, St Francis squeezes your hands on a skull: it is thinking about death, understood in terms of the redemption from the earthly life.
Every detail bears the mark of humility and penance, as the frock torn on the shoulder, the trunk is broken and the cross of wood in the rough, a clear reference to the passion of Christ.
Skull and cross the median, the intimate and profound of Francis with the divine, in an iconographic variant is widespread in the period of the counter.
Not surprisingly, the holy, famous for having embraced an ideal of life, based on poverty, during one of his retreats in prayer, he received the stigmata, reliving the physical signs of the crucifixion.
It is represented on his knees, showing only a part of the face, illuminated strategically between the right cheek and wrinkles on the forehead, and we understand the expression rapt and suffering.