This afternoon a group of Catholic cardinals in Vatican City bestowed the new papacy upon Argentina’s Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who chose the pope name Francis in honor of Saint Francis of Asisi (1181/82-1226). In honor of Pope Francis I, we parsed art history’s many, many, many portrayals of Saint Francis — there really are a lot of them, including some terrifically tenebrous renderings by Caravaggio — to find a stand-out, when we happened on optical illusionist M.C. Escher’s 1922 woodcut, “St. Francis Preaching to the Birds” (detail above, in full below).

The 1922 artwork portrays a pastoral scene with Saint Francis preaching to a group of birds, the marks on his feet and hands indicating his infliction with stigmata — Francis was the first recorded case of someone having wounds corresponding to those places where Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross according to the narrative of the Bible. (Francis was also the first to oversee the creation of a Christmas manger scene, in 1223.)

Saint Francis is known as the patron saint of animals, and was said to have referred to animals as his brothers and sisters. He allegedly preached to the birds on at least one occasion, though it’s unclear how many of them were persuaded to join the church — they were probably unmoved by his sermon, on account of their bird brains (sorry!). His attempt to convert the Sultan of Egypt in 1219 was similarly unsuccessful.

In Escher’s rendering, Saint Francis is an emaciated, pious figure surrounded by a lush forest landscape rendered in forms reminiscent of Art Nouveau. In addition to being an exceptional portrayal of the new pope’s namesake saint, the Escher print has the distinction of featuring one of art history’s best owls in its upper-right-hand corner: