October is the time of year to celebrate the life of Francis of Assisi, and I have a trio of images from French artists to add this month to the Francis of Assisi: The Troubadour of God page in the Themes of Faith section. Etienne Moreau-Nelaton, a fin-de-siecle Parisian artist best known for the collection of Impressionist paintings he bequeathed the French nation, created an otherworldly chromolithograph of Francis preaching to the birds (left) for Great Saints for Little Children, a story book he wrote and illustrated for his children in 1896. Anne Marie de Courlon, a 20th Century French illustrator, returned to the theme in a sketch for what appears to have been another image series on saintly lives, probably dating from the 1960s. Michel Ciry, a noted composer, writer, painter, and printmaker whose long career spanned the 20th and 2ist centuries, shows an older and wiser Francis in profile in a companion print to a fresh-faced and innocent portrait of the Saint from Assisi already on display. (John Kohan)