Francis and the Perfect Robe: The Costumes of "Brother Sun and Sister Moon"

Connected to the world of luxury fabrics through his family’s business, Francis breaks away from it with dramatic gestures, most notably by stripping completely in public to return all his garments to his father. Yet, at the same time, he reveals a remarkable attention and sensitivity to clothing—one that only a true expert could possess.
When he stood naked before his father and the Bishop of Assisi, he was offered ‘the poor, shabby cloak of a peasant, a servant of the bishop. Receiving it with gratitude, he traced the sign of the cross upon it with his own hand, using a brick that happened to be at hand, and fashioned from it a garment fit to cover a crucified man and a half-naked pauper’.
In search of the perfect robe to express his choice of a radical way of life his and of his brothers, thus she summarised it in her Testament: “those who came to embrace this life, gave to the poor everything they had to give, and were content with a single cowl, patched inside and outside, of the cord and of the trousers. And we didn’t want to have any more”.
Even as death drew near, he gave precise instructions for the making of his final habit, asking his friend Jacopa de’ Settesoli to procure “ash-coloured coarse cloth, of the sort woven by Cistercian monks in overseas lands”. Like his Lord, however, “he wished to leave this world naked, and he enjoined the friars who stood around him, in obedience to charity, that after his death they should leave him naked there on the ground for the time it would take to walk a mile at a comfortable pace”.
This is an original and fascinating journey that moves through the costumes of Franco Zeffirelli’s masterpiece Brother Sun, Sister Moon, biographical testimonies, and artistic representations.