Looking beyond familiar devotion to encounter the woman who helped shape Franciscan history
Walk through almost any Catholic church or browse a catalog of devotional art, and the image of St. Clare of Assisi is immediately recognizable. She is often shown beside St. Francis or holding a monstrance, recalling the beloved tradition of her courageous defense of San Damiano through her faith in Christ present in the Eucharist. These images have inspired generations of Catholics and remain deeply rooted in the Church’s devotional life.
From her welcoming gesture to the manuscript she carries, the sculpture reflects extensive historical and theological research. Rather than inventing a new image of Clare, the design seeks to recover dimensions of her life that are often less familiar today.
Yet every saint is larger than the moment for which history most readily remembers them.
When the University of St. Francis in Joliet, Illinois, began exploring a new St. Clare of Assisi statue for its St. Clare Campus, the conversation quickly moved beyond a familiar question of style or appearance. Instead, university leaders asked something far more fundamental: Who was the real Clare? If students encountered her every day outside Guardian Angel Hall, what would they learn about her life, her vocation, and her example?
That question transformed the project from simply selecting a statue into an exercise in historical research, theological reflection, and institutional identity. It also illustrates something important about the process to commission religious sculpture. At its best, original sacred art is not an attempt to create something novel. Rather, it seeks to recover truths that deserve to be seen with fresh clarity.
St. Clare’s friendship with St. Francis and her profound Eucharistic devotion remain essential parts of her story. But the university recognized that these well-loved aspects of her life are only part of a much richer legacy.
Long before history remembered her as a companion of Francis, Clare had become a founder, an abbess, a spiritual teacher, and one of the most influential women of the medieval Church. She guided her community for more than four decades through extraordinary political, ecclesial, and social challenges. Women traveled to San Damiano seeking her wisdom. Popes corresponded with her. She exercised remarkable leadership while embracing radical humility.
Perhaps most significantly, Clare became the first woman to write a monastic rule for women that received formal papal approval. Her Rule of St. Clare did far more than govern daily life within a convent. It articulated a distinctly Franciscan vision of poverty, prayer, fraternity, and joyful dependence upon God. More than eight centuries later, it continues to shape communities around the world.
For a Catholic university, that achievement carried profound significance.
Universities exist to form minds as well as hearts. They celebrate scholarship, intellectual inquiry, and the transmission of wisdom across generations. Presenting Clare simply as a figure of private devotion would have overlooked one of history’s most remarkable examples of female leadership, theological insight, and institutional vision. Her written Rule became not merely a historical document but a lasting contribution to the life of the Church.
That realization naturally shaped every artistic decision that followed.
Rather than beginning with the question, “What should she hold?” the design process began with another question: “What best represents the historical Clare?”
The answer was not a symbolic object added for visual interest. It was the Rule itself.
The manuscript represents the Rule of Life that Clare composed for her sisters—the first monastic rule written by a woman for women to receive papal approval. For a Catholic university, it symbolizes scholarship, wisdom, leadership, and the enduring relationship between faith and learning.
In the finished Franciscan sculpture, Clare gently carries a medieval manuscript representing the Rule of St. Clare. It immediately identifies her as a teacher, an author, and a woman whose faith found expression not only in prayer but also in thoughtful leadership. For students entering classrooms every day, the manuscript becomes a quiet reminder that intellectual achievement and deep holiness are never opposed. Learning itself can become an act of discipleship.
That symbolism is particularly fitting within a university environment. Books represent the pursuit of truth. Clare’s manuscript represents truth placed at the service of human flourishing. It reminds students that authentic leadership begins not with authority but with wisdom.
Her other hand extends outward in a simple gesture of welcome.
It is neither theatrical nor sentimental. Instead, it reflects the Franciscan spirit of hospitality that marked Clare’s life. Throughout her years as abbess, San Damiano became a place where others found encouragement, prayer, and peace. The open hand quietly invites students, faculty, visitors, and patients alike into that same spirit of welcome before they even enter the building behind her.
Even details that many observers may never consciously notice contribute to telling Clare’s story faithfully.
She stands barefoot.
In medieval Italy, bare feet spoke not of poverty alone but of voluntary simplicity and humility. They reflect a woman who intentionally embraced a life stripped of status and privilege in order to follow Christ more completely. The absence of elaborate footwear says as much about Clare’s values as any written inscription could.
Around her waist rests the familiar Franciscan cord with its three knots representing poverty, chastity, and obedience. While immediately recognizable within Franciscan spirituality, it also reminds viewers that Clare’s leadership flowed from vows freely embraced rather than power acquired. Her authority emerged from fidelity.
The sculpted manuscript itself resembles a genuine medieval volume rather than a modern book. Its proportions, binding, and presentation subtly reinforce the historical setting of Clare’s life. The goal was never archaeological reconstruction for its own sake but historical authenticity placed in the service of theological truth.
Perhaps the most challenging artistic decision involved her face.
History offers no portrait of Clare painted from life. Every artist must therefore interpret her appearance. Yet interpretation carries responsibility.
Rather than creating an idealized figure detached from history, the sculpture presents Clare as recognizably Italian, youthful yet mature, attractive without romanticizing her features. Her expression conveys intelligence, peaceful confidence, and quiet strength rather than dramatic emotion. She appears as someone capable of governing a religious community, offering spiritual counsel, and writing a Rule that would shape centuries of Franciscan life.
In many ways, the face became the key to the entire project. Students encounter expressions before they interpret symbols. A face communicates character almost instantly. Here they meet not an unreachable medieval icon but a woman whose serenity has been forged through prayer, sacrifice, learning, and faithful leadership.
The placement of the sculpture completes that conversation.
Rather than standing in isolation, Clare welcomes visitors outside Guardian Angel Hall on the university’s St. Clare Campus, home of the Leach College of Nursing and Health Sciences. Every day students preparing for careers in nursing, healthcare, and professions dedicated to serving others walk past her.
Location, in sacred art, is never accidental.
Placed elsewhere, the sculpture might simply commemorate a historical figure. Here, it quietly participates in the university’s educational mission. Students entering demanding professions encounter someone who understood service not as sentiment but as vocation. Clare devoted her life to caring for others spiritually, forming community, exercising leadership with humility, and remaining steadfast during uncertainty. Those same qualities remain essential for healthcare professionals entrusted with the dignity of every human person.
Many of those students are women preparing to lead within hospitals, clinics, schools, and communities. Clare offers them a model that reaches beyond contemporary discussions about leadership. She demonstrates that courage and humility need not compete, that intellectual excellence can coexist with profound faith, and that authentic influence often grows through service rather than recognition.
The sculpture therefore becomes more than campus decoration. It becomes part of the university’s daily formation of its students.
This illustrates why institutions sometimes choose to pursue custom religious sculpture rather than selecting an existing design. The motivation is rarely a novelty. Instead, it is the desire to express a particular mission with historical and theological integrity.
A catalog statue serves many important purposes and has enriched countless churches, schools, and institutions. But occasionally an institution’s identity invites a more focused conversation. Through a thoughtful religious sculpture design process, symbols, posture, expression, historical research, and placement can work together to communicate ideas uniquely connected to a specific community.
That is precisely what occurred here.
The resulting Catholic university sculpture is unmistakably St. Clare. Nothing about her identity has been reinvented or modernized. Instead, aspects of her remarkable life that are sometimes overshadowed by more familiar devotional imagery have been brought gently back into view. The sculpture broadens understanding without replacing tradition.
The finished bronze began as a hand-sculpted clay original. Working at full scale allowed every expression, gesture, fold of fabric, and symbolic detail to be refined before the sculpture was cast in bronze, ensuring that the final work faithfully reflected both St. Clare and the university’s mission.
In that sense, the project offers a broader lesson for anyone considering a Catholic sculpture commission, whether for a university, parish, retreat center, hospital, or school. Original sacred art succeeds not because it is different from what has come before, but because it listens carefully—to history, to theology, to the life of the Church, and to the mission of the institution it serves.
The finest examples of custom church statue design do not begin with aesthetics. They begin with questions. Who was this saint? What did the Church receive through this person’s life? Which aspects of that witness speak most clearly within this particular place? Only then does artistic form emerge.
In the end, the University of St. Francis did not seek to make St. Clare contemporary by reshaping her story. It sought something both more demanding and more enduring: to know her more completely.
Rather than emphasizing only the familiar devotional imagery associated with St. Clare, this original sculpture draws upon centuries of history to portray her as abbess, teacher, writer, and founder. Every artistic decision was intended to help students encounter the historical Clare while remaining faithful to the Church’s tradition.
That may be the quiet vocation of every successful effort to commission religious sculpture.
The goal is not to create something different.
It is to create something deeply faithful.
Faithful to the saint.
Faithful to history.
Faithful to theology.
Faithful to the institution’s mission.
Because the most meaningful sacred art does not make saints relevant by changing them.
It makes them relevant by understanding them more deeply.
Considering a Custom Sculpture for Your Institution?
Indweller Artistic works with universities, parishes, schools, and religious communities to create original sacred art rooted in historical and theological research. Whether you are exploring a sculpture for a saint’s feast, a campus landmark, or a formation space, we can help you discover what best represents that saint’s story for your community.
