Description
Renunciation of Worldly Goods represents one of the decisive episodes in the youth of Saint Francis: the moment when, before the bishop of Assisi and in the presence of his father Pietro di Bernardone, Francis publicly renounces his inheritance and family property. The episode, derived from the early Franciscan biographies, expresses in radical form his break with wealth and with the life his family had planned for him.
The composition is conceived as a confrontation between two spheres: on the left stands the secular world led by his father, while on the right the bishop shelters Francis and represents the ecclesiastical realm to which the young man entrusts himself. The conflict is organized through a clear spatial and psychological division.
