My overview of artworks of St. Francis of Assisi from the on-line Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection comes to an end this week with a piece by New Mexican Artist Marie Romero Cash representing a second genre of Franciscan art very different from the whimsical depictions we have already seen of the nature-loving saint preaching to the birds. It is a somber, contemplative image of St. Francis pondering Christ on the Cross with the stigmata visible on his own hands, reflecting on human mortality, symbolized by the skull. Cash comes from a family of Hispanic folk artists in New Mexico who have kept alive a special form of sacred art-making dating back to the Spanish colonial period, where images of saints (santos) are painted in a stylized way on hand-carved panels of wood, primed with homemade gesso, using natural water-based pigments. She grew up watching her parents making hammered tin art objects objects like the frame surrounding this painting in the family kitchen. In a craft, traditionally, dominated by men, Cash holds the singular distinction of being chosen in 1997 to paint the Stations of the Cross panels in the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi in Santa Fe. (John Kohan)