Saint Francis of Assisi (1181–1226) was “faint in love” with Lady Poverty, according to the anonymous Sacrum commercium (1237–1239), a Franciscan allegory modeled on a medieval chanson de geste, which was later depicted on the crossing vault (Vele) of the Lower Church in San Francesco, Assisi. There, above his tomb, Giotto’s workshop painted a youthful-looking Francis, without shoes and wearing a brown tunic, gently holding his lover’s left hand and placing a ring on her finger. As the inscription tells us, Poverty, in a wretched, tattered garment, is “pricked by harsh briars…yet she is surrounded by blooming roses.” The two are married by Christ, and it is Poverty and Christ who stand in the center of the scene, encouraging Francis to join them. The marriage of Francis and Lady Poverty is the quintessential Franciscan image of the 14th century, the period before the Order almost split over interpretations of the vow of poverty. This project seeks to return to the issue, contextualizing pauperitas within the Trecento’s rising wealth inequality and exploring how images articulated debates raging in literature and philosophy.

Based around four case studies, “Painting Poverty” explores the possibilities of meaning revealed by these images, specifically in a context marked by bankruptcy and famine during the first half of the Trecento. It starts by looking anew at Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s frescoes, The Allegory of Good and Bad Government, in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, focusing on the city and adjacent landscapes in order to analyze their representation of the market as well as the relationship between feudal and proto-capitalist economies (i.e., city and countryside). It then turns to questions of usury, charity, and banking in relation to Giotto’s frescoes in the Arena Chapel, and to the relationship between wisdom and wealth in Assisi’s Vele. Finally, questions of value and women’s work will inform my study of a series of Neapolitan commissions from the 1330s, when Sancia of Majorca (1281–1345) attempted to return to an “original” Franciscanism dedicated to an ideal of apostolic poverty, by then declared heretical. 

Rather than arguing that Giotto, Lorenzetti, and other Trecento artists were making economic statements in visual form, “Painting Poverty” explores viewers’ possible responses. The central contention is that Franciscan and medieval academic debates about money, the morality of owning property, and the ethics of wealth were related to economic developments, where nascent capitalism and its corollaries (e.g., wealth inequality, waged work, urban poverty, monetization) were shaping the distinction between private and public, as well as ideas about value, nature, and women’s work. I argue that, at least for certain viewers and at certain moments (say, during the famines of 1346/1347 or the bankruptcies of the Florentine banks in the early 1340s), the images that decorate the walls and ceilings of the Arena Chapel, Palazzo Pubblico, Lower Church in Assisi, and Santa Chiara in Naples were rich sites to address questions that have often accompanied the development of capitalism.

“Painting Poverty” developed out of a class I taught at James Madison University, and I spent my two months at the Center focusing on background historical and philosophical readings, which considerably strengthened my working theory and clarified how the four case studies fit together. Thanks to the collections of the Library of Congress, I focused on medieval theological and philosophical debates about money, value, and private property, especially in the thought of Franciscan Peter John Olivi (1248–1298), Pope John XXII (1244–1334), and the radical Franciscan environments favored by Sancia in the 1330s and 1340s. At the National Gallery of Art, I had the opportunity to look closely at Tino di Camaino’s Madonna and Child with Queen Sancia, Saints, and Angels, which had just returned from New York and London, and to speak to conservators about the marble relief. My fellowship was unfortunately affected by the government shutdown, so I adjusted, reading political philosophy on capitalism and its effects on women’s work and nature at the DC Public Library and the Folger Shakespeare Library. I would like to thank everyone at the Center for all they did during the shutdown to make it possible to carry on research.

James Madison University 
Leonard A. Lauder Visiting Senior Fellow, September–October 2025

Maria Harvey returns to her position as assistant professor of art history and associate director of the Madison Art Collection at James Madison University.