London, Richard L. Feigen, Italian Paintings , 12 June - 27 July 1990, no. 8. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi , 14 February - 12 May 2002, no. 3; also Rome, Museo del Palazzo di Venezia, 15 October 2001 - 6 January 2002; and Saint Louis, Nelson-Atkins Museum, 15 June - 15 September 2002.
Provenance
Private Collection, Chile. Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, New York, 3 June 1988, lot 72, as 'Roman School c. 1610'. with Richard L. Feigen & Co., New York.
Notes
The present painting is one of four depictions of Saint Francis painted by Orazio Gentileschi in the first dozen years of the seventeenth century. Keith Christiansen ( op. cit. , pp. 53-54) describes the scene as:
'show(ing) the moment after Saint Francis received the stigmata on Mount La Verna. A wooden cross is propped on a rocky ledge while, above, the rays of a miraculous light illuminate the figures. Tears course down the saint's cheeks, attesting to his sorrow for the suffering of Christ but also alluding, more generally, to what sixteenth- and seventeenth-century religious writers referred to as the gift of tears. In his treatise Delli dolori di Christo Signor Nostro , published in Bergamo in 1598, the Capuchin friar Mattia da Salò wrote of "sweet and bitter tears that, washing the face, leave the interior like fire"'.
The cult of Saint Francis had enjoyed revived popularity since the Capuchin order established itself as an independent branch of the Franciscans, approved by Pope Paul III in 1536: 'The thirteenth-century saint became the exemplar of devotional practice, with emphasis on his conformity to Christ through his visionary and mystical experience'. ( op. cit. , p. 50). According to Pamela Askew (P. Askew, 'The Angelic Consolation of St. Francis of Assisi in Post-Tridentine Italian Painting', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes , 32, London, 1969, pp. 280-306), depictions of this subject by Caravaggio and his followers are based on scenes of the dead Christ supported by angels or Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. Orazio Gentileschi, for reasons still not fully explored, was notably connected to the Capuchin order from the first decade of the seventeenth century, which accounts for the many portrayals of the saint throughout his career.
Christiansen dates this painting to circa 1600-01, precisely the moment that Caravaggio's profoundly influential works at the Contarelli Chapel in Rome's San Luigi dei Francesi were unveiled. This important event would redirect Orazio's artistic focus - prompting him to abandon the classicizing tendencies that characterized his work of the 1580s and 1590s and committing himself fully to Caravaggio's doctrine of painting directly from life. While Gentileschi's artistic transformation took place gradually over a decade, this Stigmatization of Saint Francis represents his first steps.
Orazio draws from various contemporary sources to create this picture. The composition is most directly related to Giovanni Baglione's Saint Francis with Two Angels (fig. 1; private collection). But, Christiansen points out, 'There can be little doubt that Orazio was responding to the descriptive character of Caravaggio's painting of the same subject ( Ecstasy of Saint Francis , Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford), then in the collection of the banker Ottavio Costa. But he has seen that early masterpiece through the lens of Caravaggio's more focused and dramatically lit paintings of 1600-01 - not only the Calling of Saint Matthew in the Contarelli chapel, but also the canvases in the Cerasi chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo'.
This Stigmatization of Saint Francis shows a more intense study from life than either his earlier Saint Francis supported by an Angel (fig. 2; private collection) or Baglione's work. In comparing the paintings, Christiansen notes: 'Yet for all the similarity in the saint's pose and in the arrangement of his habit, there is a profound shift in mood and style. What in [the Saint Francis supported by an Angel ] is apprehended as an interior experience is here externalized, and the approach is far more descriptive. The way the angel, his leg bent and his head thrown back, grips the cord of the saint's habit with his left hand while with the right he supports Francis beneath his right arm suggests that Gentileschi studied the mechanics of the pose from a model. The same realistic intent is evident in the depiction of the coarse weave, patches, and tattered edges of the saint's habit (traits that associate the picture with the reforming zeal of the Capuchins), in the sheen and texture of the angel's wings, and in the various plants. A dandelion (with one bloom and a flower gone to seed), clover and a fig can be identified. The fig commonly refers to the Resurrection and is a motif underscoring the analogy of the Stigmatization with Christ's Passion' ( loc. cit. , p. 53).
While Orazio attempts to go beyond a superficial exploration of Caravaggism in this painting, he struggles somewhat to completely abandon his earlier style - the agitated drapery and the highly charged palette are remnants of his mannerist tendencies. Orazio resolves these stylistic conflicts in his later work, Saint Francis with an Angel of circa 1612 (fig. 3; Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Palazzo Barberini, Rome). There the composition is harmonious, the palette quiet and the overall effect elegant. In that painting, Christiansen observes that Orazio has finally achieved a 'balance between the actuality of the posed model and the artistic idea'.
When the painting appeared on the art market in 1988, as 'Roman School, c. 1610', it had scarcely been published. Alternate attributions offered then included Artemisia Gentileschi (by John Spike) and Baglione. Nicholson ( op. cit ) includes it in the listing of the earlier picture (fig. 2), with a question mark, as 'Saint Francis in Ecstasy, supported by an Angel'. The misinterpretation of the subject could imply that he knew it only from documents. Gianni Papi, in his exhibition catalogue, Artemisia , dates this work to circa 1611-12, the period in which Orazio worked with the Agostino Tassi on the frescoes for Casino delle Muse , Rome.
