The exhibition, Without Limit: St Francis 800, currently at Il-Hagar – Heart of Gozo Museum in Victoria, marks the eighth centenary of the death of St Francis of Assisi with an exhibition of remarkable breadth.

The museum said that bringing together sixty works, it considers not simply the historical saint who died in 1226, but the continuously evolving image of Francis and the relevance of his message to the contemporary world.

”The exhibition’s title is well chosen. Francis repeatedly crossed the boundaries imposed by wealth, social convention, religious complacency, and fear. His embrace of poverty, his encounter with the marginalised, and his perception of creation as a community of brothers and sisters remain quietly radical,” the museum said.

The participating artists approach this legacy through differing styles, media, and degrees of literalness. Some works draw upon familiar episodes from Franciscan history: the renunciation of worldly possessions, the encounter with the leper, the preaching to the birds, the first representation of the Nativity at Greccio, and the reception of the stigmata. Others move away from narrative and concentrate on Franciscan ideas-humility, vulnerability, peace, fraternity, and humanity’s relationship with nature.

Il-Hagar highlighted that this variety is one of the exhibition’s principal strengths. Traditional religious imagery stands beside works employing contemporary visual languages. ”In some, the saint is clearly recognisable through the habit, cord or stigmata; elsewhere, his presence is suggested through an empty garment, a wounded body, a landscape or a gesture of surrender. The exhibition demonstrates how a subject deeply rooted in Christian iconography can remain open to reinterpretation.”

The ecological dimension is particularly timely. Francis did not regard the natural world merely as scenery placed at humanity’s disposal. In the Canticle of the Creatures, the sun, moon, wind, water, fire, and earth belong to one extended family. At a moment of environmental anxiety, this vision assumes renewed urgency. Several works invite viewers to reconsider humanity not as the master of creation but as a participant within it.

The museum noted that ”an exhibition containing sixty works inevitably presents contrasts in style and intensity. Not all interpretations are equally original, and the abundance of imagery can occasionally compete with the contemplative character of the subject. Yet this unevenness also reflects the exhibition’s underlying proposition: Francis cannot be confined to a single period, aesthetic or devotional formula.”

Il-Hagar said that it ”provides an appropriate setting for this encounter between history, faith, and contemporary creativity.”

Supporting material situates the works within the saint’s life, while the collective presentation encourages visitors to move between biography, symbolism, and present-day concerns. Without Limit: St Francis 800 ultimately succeeds because it avoids treating its subject as a remote medieval figure, the museum said.

Il-Hagar concluded by saying that the exhibition presents Francis as an ”unsettling contemporary presence – one who continues to question our relationship with possessions, power, suffering, one another and the earth itself. Eight centuries after his death, his challenge remains without limit.”

Curated by Joseph Calleja – Without Limit: St Francis 800 – can be viewed until the 8th of November.

The museum is located in St George’s Square, Victoria and is open 9am to 5pm daily.

Photo: Il-Hagar Museum

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