To combat the spread of Protestantism, the Catholic Church encouraged artists to reassert the importance of the saints and paint dramatic, sensual imagery with which the faithful could empathize. Emotionally-charged depictions of Saint Francis were especially popular. Gentileschi chose to focus on the friar’s ecstatic state—he didn’t include the traditional stigmata, or wounds of Christ, said to have been imprinted on the saint’s body while at prayer. A document from 1603 records that Gentileschi lent his younger colleague Caravaggio a monk's habit and a pair of swan wings, studio props that appear in this painting and in later works by Caravaggio.

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