Central Italy has some of the most complex geology in the world. In the midst of this inscrutable territory, two people emerged – St. Francis and Giotto – and they would ultimately change the history of ecology, religion and art by extolling the landscapes and geology of this region.

From antiquity to the Middle Ages, humans had a conflicting relationship with nature, seeing it as representing either divine or satanic forces. On the vanguard of a change in perspective toward the natural world was St. Francis of Assisi (ca. 1181–1226) who is now, thanks to his pioneering work, a patron of ecology.