The Franciscan Order was one of the most prominent monastic orders in seventeenth-century Italy (Castiglione’s brother Paolo was a friar in the Order). Depictions of St Francis receiving the stigmata and other Franciscan saints in their devotions were common throughout the Catholic world. Castiglione’s series of studies of Franciscan saints approach the status of a painting more closely than any other of his works on paper. Once again it is hard to understand the function of these sheets: are they exercises that allowed Castiglione simply to explore the challenges of the subject matter; were they models to show to potential clients for his paintings; or did he hope that they would find a market as small-scale devotional works, to be framed and hung?