Saint Francis by Francisco Ribalta
Toward the end of the 17th century, Saint Francis’s iconography expanded as many of the classical biographic themes were replaced with more complex episodes -especially trance visions- mystical ecstasies that reflected the new Baroque esthetic and offered, in the case of Saint Francis, a new approach to the depiction of a figure whose life was being presented by his Order in terms of biographical parallels to the life of Jesus Christ.
The episode presented here narrates the apparition of a musician angel in the saint’s humble quarters. Ribalta presents it as an extraordinary event that the Franciscan friar entering the cell at that moment is unable to see. As usual with this painter, the scene is based on a print: a composition by Italian artists Polo Piazza engraved by Sadeler in 1604. On the basis of that print, Ribalta depicts the moment as the experience of an unreal light that envelops and transforms the saint’s everyday surroundings.
The contrast between the monk’s minute candle and the luminous experience flooding over Saint Francis makes light the essential protagonist. This ties in with works by the first Spanish naturalists, especially the Death of Saint Francis (Lisbon, Museu de Arte Antiga) by Bartolomé Carducho, whom Francisco Ribalta met and admired around 1620. Both artists shared the same direct, dense and vibrant sense of painting and the same approach to reality, which is conveyed by the textures and qualities of every single object in the saint’s humble quarters and the enormous expressivity of the faces imbued with a strong sense of reality and a human closeness. These aspects also reveal Ribalta’s proximity to the work of Caravaggio at a time when the Spanish artist was intensifying his tenebrism and simplifying his compositions -as he does here- to facilitate the images’ visual impact.
This work was painted for the Capuchin convent of La Sangre de Cristo in Valencia, from which Ribalta also painted a Last Supper and Saint Francis Embracing the Crucified Christ in 1620. While Saint Francis Comforted by an Angel is not documented, it has been considered proper to include it in a chronology alongside the two works just mentioned.
This canvas entered the Royal Collections when Charles IV visited Valencia and acquired it, as one of the most perfect known works by señor Ribalta, as he was called at that time, and sent Vicente López, the finest painter then in Valencia, to make a faithful copy for the Convent.
This image is a public domain image, which means either that copyright has expired in the image or the copyright holder has waived their copyright. Franciscan Gallery charges for the access to high resolution copy of the image. Manually restoration was necessary in order to improve quality, without covering the original image.
Comments
Post a Comment