By Lily Nothling

Topic: Libraries, Museums and Galleries

Friday, 19 June 2026, 6:48 am

A collection of 20 tapestries about the life of St Francis of Assisi has been in storage for 50 years.

In short:

Twenty big tapestries about Saint Francis of Assisi will be shown at the National Gallery.

Some tapestries were shown before, but this is the first time all are displayed together.

What's next?

The Arthur Boyd: Tapestries exhibition opens on Saturday.

For 50 years, 20 big tapestries by a famous Australian artist have been mostly in storage.

Arthur Boyd did not see all the tapestries displayed before he died in 1999.

Now, the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra will show all the tapestries to the public.

Elspeth Pitt says people wanted to see all the tapestries together for a long time.

This exhibition took 50 years to happen, says senior curator Elspeth Pitt.

There was a long desire to display them, and it finally happened after many years.

In the late 1960s, Boyd asked a Portuguese workshop to make big tapestries from his pastels of Saint Francis.

Between 1970 and 1974, weavers at the Manufactura de Tapeçarias de Portalegre made the tapestries.

Each tapestry is 2.5 metres by 3.4 metres.

Vera Fino says all the tapestries were made by hand.

Weavers worked together around the clock, adding 3 centimetres to the tapestries each day.

Sometimes, Boyd was in a hurry, so the weavers worked in three eight-hour shifts to finish on time.

The National Gallery could not find the names of all the weavers who worked on the tapestries.

The artist and the saint

Ms Pitt says the Saint Francis tapestries were a big project for Boyd.

Arthur Boyd died in 1993 before seeing all the tapestries displayed together.

Boyd paid a lot of money for the tapestries, about three quarters of a million dollars today.

Saint Francis was a source of fascination for the artist.

It may seem strange that an Australian artist was interested in the life of this saint, but Saint Francis was like Boyd in many ways.

Saint Francis was an artist, poet, environmentalist, and pacifist, like Boyd.

There was a connection between the two men.

One of the tapestries, St Francis cleansing the leper, is on display.

The National Gallery of Australia bought the tapestries in 1975, before the gallery opened.

Some tapestries were shown before, but this is the first time all are displayed together.

The exhibition opens to the public on Saturday.

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