After Christianity was made the official religion of the Roman Empire by the Emporer Constantine in the early 300s, he moved the capital away from Rome, to the East, to a city known as Byzantium, which he renamed Constantinople (and which is today Istanbul). The Christian Church was divided between the Eastern Church (known today as Greek Orthodox) and the Roman Church (led by the Pope in Rome).

The stigmata are the wounds of Christ's crucifixion appearing miraculously on a human body. Many artists painted the subject of St. Francis receiving the stigmata, including Caravaggio.

A later image of St. Francis, from the Proto-Renaissance, by Giotto (1295-1300) is a clear departure from the flat, unrealistic style of Berlinghieri. Giotto embraces naturalism - his figure is bulky and we can see modeling describing the form of his body. Kneeling on the ground, he is no longer frontal, symmetrical and weightless.

Images are powerful. There have been many points in history when images were destroyed (referred to as iconoclasm) for political or religious reasons. There are also times when images are censored (think about images of dead American soldiers in the Iraq war).