Chapel 42 - The Altar of St. Francis

This place is not part of the narrative cycle of the history of the life of Jesus. It recalls the location where the ancient altar was placed where the founder of the Sacred Mount , Father Bernardino Caimi, celebrated his first masses when the church of the Assumption had not yet been built.
The chapel is dedicated to St. Francis and depicts the death of the saint surrounded by his friars. Above the altar there was a panel painted by Gaudenzio Ferrari around 1517 (now housed in the Pinacoteca of  Varallo) with St. Francis receiving the stigmata. It was made, together with the fresco decoration of the chapel, at the behest of the nobleman Emiliano Scarognini, benefactor of the Sacred Mount who also ordered the chapel of the Sepulcher.   
The fresco with the death of the saint was painted in 1880 by the Valsesian painter Pier Celestino Gilardi thanks to the support of Benedetta Totti Durio from Civiasco.