Ideas of Franciscan Observancy in the wall paintings of the church of Sts Francis and Bernardino in Vilnius at the beginning of the sixteenth century

ENThe Franciscan Order and its branch of the Observants paid great attention to wall painting in church decoration. Comparatively cheap techniques met the requirements of poverty and modest facilities that were of great importance to the mendicant order while the emotional effect of the images were used to teach the truths of faith by presenting exemplary patterns of evangelical life and thus immortalizing the saints. Having survived up until today, the cycle of wall paintings in the Church of Sts Francis and Bernardino of the Franciscan Observants locally known as the Bernardines in Vilnius was created in the first decades of the sixteenth century, to be more precise, after 1513, as until that point reconstruction of the church was ongoing, and before 1521, as the new church is mentioned to have been consecrated in that year.