The Vision of St. Francis

This watercolor's travels and previous ownership tell a fascinating story while offering insights into the artist's deep interest in spiritual themes. Burne-Jones painted the work in 1887 when he learned that his former studio assistant, Edward Clifford, was planning a trip to Hawaii to research leprosy control for the Church of England. It was a gift for Father Damien, a Belgian Catholic priest who shattered religious and cultural taboos when he established a mission for lepers on the island of Moloka'i in 1873. Damien eventually contracted the disease and died in 1889, four months after receiving the watercolor. He was nursed at the end by Sister Marianne Cope, a German-born American nun who continued his ministry and hung the watercolor in the mission's leper chapel (both Damien and Marianne were recently canonized). After Marianne’s death in 1918, the watercolor was preserved in the archives of the Sisters of St. Francis, in Syracuse, New York. Burne-Jones devotees believed it lost, knowing the work only through descriptions in books by Clifford and Georgiana Burne-Jones and from related graphite studies. It took a century for St. Francis to be rediscovered and published in the "Burlington Magazine" (September 2018) by Douglas E. Schoenherr, after which the Sisters of St. Francis generously offered their treasure to the Met to make it more broadly accessible.