Art, literature & history
St. Francis
1638
- Dating
- Exact year
- Held at
- The Cleveland Museum of Art
- Medium
- engraving
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 47.6 x 31.6 cm (18 3/4 x 12 7/16 in.); Matted: 60.5 x 44.1 cm (23 13/16 x 17 3/8 in.); Image: 44.6 x 28.9 cm (17 9/16 x 11 3/8 in.)
- Collection no.
- 2023.159
- Attribution
- By the artist
- Image rights
- CC0 1.0License details
Claude Mellan. St. Francis. Claude Mellan; The Cleveland Museum of Art; James Parmelee Fund. CC0 1.0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/). Full-frame proportional resize and JPEG compression.
Collection: The Cleveland Museum of Art
About this artwork
St. Francis — Claude Mellan. 1638.
Medium: engraving. Dimensions: Sheet: 47.6 x 31.6 cm (18 3/4 x 12 7/16 in.); Matted: 60.5 x 44.1 cm (23 13/16 x 17 3/8 in.); Image: 44.6 x 28.9 cm (17 9/16 x 11 3/8 in.).
Collection record: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland. Museum connection according to this source; current display unverified.
The French engraver Claude Mellan spent time in Rome, where he developed a unique engraving style that uses simplified linear patterns and swelled lines to create optical, almost abstract effects. He made this image St. Francis, one of several featuring saints in the wilderness, just after he returned to Paris. The engraver’s inventive patterns of lines cross at small angles, creating moiré effects, so that the surface seems to shimmer.
Source: official collection record. Metadata selected and normalized by Artline from the source export, accessed 10 September 2026; no museum endorsement. Reproduction rights are separate.
Location checked Sep 10, 2026. This does not indicate whether the work is on display.