Vision of Saint Francis by Menendez Pidal

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Vision of Saint Francis of Assisi

1888. Oil on canvas

It is the oldest of the works that the Prado conserves by Menendez Pidal and which he himself called An Ecstasy of Saint Francis, later known as Vision of Saint Francis.

He painted it in Florence in 1888, during the period that the artist, who had enjoyed an extraordinary scholarship from the Ministry of Public Works since 1885 to expand his studies, lived in Italy. In addition to the painter's deep religious feeling, we must consider the inspiration that the visit to Assisi must have exerted on him, in a period in which numerous Spanish artists, including José Jiménez Aranda, José Gallegos and, above all, the Benlliure brothers , they painted in that Italian town. On the other hand, in those years the decoration of the basilica of San Francisco el Grande was being carried out, in which, among others, his teacher Alejandro Ferrant worked and in which, years later, in 1917, Menéndez himself would decorate a vault. Ask.

The dominant spirituality in the last decades of the century had led to a rise in the figure of the saint and I Fioretti di San Francesco, which collect the passage represented by the artist. This recreates, on the other hand, a frequent iconography in Counter-Reformation painting since the end of the 16th century. The painter must have been well aware of both the examples of Ribalta (P01062) and Murillo (Academia de San Fernando in Madrid), as well as that of Ludovico Cardi, II Cigoli (Florence, Uffizi), but none of them influenced him. On the other hand, the type of the saint is closer to Saint Francis embracing Christ on the Cross, a work by Murillo that Menéndez Pidal knew well, since it was in the Museum of Fine Arts of Seville, where he had begun as a painter in 1875-1876. copying, precisely, the works of the Sevillian artist. The atmosphere of the work, the interior and the pallet are also reminiscent of the mature painting of Domenico Morelli (1826-1901), a painter well known to Spanish artists. In the angel the technique is loose, there is no contour drawing, the wings and veils appear as transparencies and the coloring is richer. All of this is related to the painting of his teacher Ferrant, whose watercolor appearance suited an unreal figure, like that of a vision of ecstasy; We must also consider the possible influence, in chromaticism, of his teacher in Florence, Stefano Ussi, who in his maturity had clarified his palette.

Given that the painting was of regular dimensions, Menéndez Pidal made a sketch (E. Masaveu Collection, Gijón, Asturias), in which the main motif is not, as in the final work, the Angelic Concert but the same counter-reformist theme that it represents. José de Ribera in his Vision of San Francisco del Prado (P01107) which the painter knew well. In the painting, the light comes from outside, the saint is standing, and the angel in the sketch becomes a musical young angel; Both figures almost occupy the composition and acquire greater importance, as well as the interior, especially the pallet.

In the careful representation of this one we can see an attention to the humble objects that, just as in the realistic physiognomy and ardent spirituality of the saint, recalls the spirit of Spanish painting of the 17th century, although the type of angel is strange to that tradition, as critics noted when it was exhibited in Madrid

The artist destined the canvas for the contest that Abelardo de Carlos, director of The Spanish and American Illustration, had called in June 1888, in which it was finally discarded for not adapting to the conditions requested.

Speaking of Saint Francis' devotion to angels, Celano wrote:

«I had a great deal of veneration and love for angels, who are with us in the fight and go with us in the shadows of death. He said that such companions should be venerated everywhere; that at least those who are our custodians had to be invoked. He taught not to offend their sight and not to dare to do in their presence what would not be done before men".

(2 Cel 197).

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