This chapter focuses on three miracle stories from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries that deal with the depiction of stigmata on painted images of Saint Francis of Assisi (d. 1226). The paintings in the narratives both depicted the miraculous and were themselves miraculous or conduits for the miraculous. It is possible that the specific images to which the sources referred never existed except as written constructs designed to make a particular point about Francis's miraculous stigmata. Nonetheless, the stories allow an interrogation of the, sometimes visceral, responses to the visual representation of stigmata and, in doing so, provide insights into the expectations that people had of the tasks of art and, in particular, of picturing the miraculous.

In the Legenda Maior (Major Legend), the official life of Francis written by Saint Bonaventure (1221–1274) and presented to the general chapter of the Franciscan Order at Pisa in 1263, the stigmatization was described as having taken place on the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (14 September) in 1224. While fasting and praying on Mount La Verna, Francis received a vision of a seraph and, after the vision disappeared, nail-like protuberances appeared in his hands and feet and a red wound on his right side. During the remaining two years of his life, he kept the stigmata a close secret. Only those nearest to him knew of them or had the opportunity to see them.