Saint Bernardino by El Greco
Saint Bernardino of Siena (1603) by El Greco.
Bernardino of Siena is depicted wearing his Franciscan habit, In his preaching, Bernardine showed the people a panel with the monogram IHS (Iesus Hominum Salvator: Jesus, Savior of Men) in gold letters, within a blue circle, surrounded by a radiant sun. There is also a book under his left arm. This work was commissioned for the university college of San Bernardino in Toledo.
There were 3,000 reales for this work, in February 1603 and it was ready the following September. In the left background is a landscape of the city of Toledo, featuring the monastery of San Bartolome de la Vega, destroyed during the Peninsular War, and the Montero Chapel, which has also disappeared. In the right foreground are three mitres, each representing one of the bishoprics the saint declined.
Saint Bernardine of Siena was a Franciscan friar and founder of the Friars Minor of the Regular Observance. He was considered the greatest orator of his time and devoted himself to serving the sick, especially during the plague that devastated his city in 1400. Of great humility, he refused the bishoprics of Siena, Urbino, and Ferrara so that he could better dedicate himself to his charitable work.
El Greco depicts Saint Bernardine standing, wearing the Franciscan habit. Bernardine turns his face slightly to his left, and with his right arm he holds a staff surmounted by the IHS Christogram and the radiant sun. His left arm is kept at his side, and beneath his left hand he carries a book bound in the Plateresque style.
In the lower right corner of the canvas are depicted the three episcopal mitres he renounced in order to continue his work of preaching and charity. In the lower left corner, a landscape can be seen, which bears little resemblance to the Tuscany or Abruzzo region where Bernardino preached. Instead, a city reminiscent of Toledo and its cigarrals is depicted, with a broad, misty skyscape, as in most of the Cretan master's landscapes.
This painting, in its proportions, concept of space, and position of the figure, is very reminiscent of Saint Joseph with the Child Jesus (Saint Joseph Chapel), painted a few years earlier, although the coloring is much more sober and tends toward monochrome. Furthermore, the geometric design of Saint Bernardine's body is evident, appearing to be inscribed within an isosceles triangle. Even his head has a triangular structure, and a diagonal crosses from the monogram to the mitres, passing through his left hand and the book he is holding.
Saint Bernardine of Siena (1380-1444) grew up in a patrician family that provided him with a solid intellectual education. In 1400, he entered the Franciscan Order. The Italian saint is shown wearing the Franciscan habit and holding a small staff crowned with the anagram of the name Jesus in his right hand. Under his left arm, he holds a book with a characteristic Plateresque binding.
In the right corner of the floor, next to his feet, there are three mitres corresponding to the three bishoprics he rejected and, on the opposite side, further back, there is a sketch of a landscape and some buildings of Toledo.
Saint Bernardino stands out against a cloudscape of stormy clouds that enhance the monumentality of the figure. It is conceived as a pyramidal composition, marked by the wide base of the habit, and culminating in the delicate, small head of the saint, a man in his thirties, with a sharp gaze and a physiognomy contemporary with the painter: a face with fine features, a pointed goatee and a mustache with pronounced sideburns, large, almond-shaped eyes, and a melancholic expression, similar to that of the gentlemen portrayed by El Greco in Toledo at the turn of the century.
With this vision, El Greco moves away from the iconography that depicts the more traditional figure, in his old age, worn by mortifications, with the face of a feverish, haggard, and wrinkled ascetic described by Louis Réau. This painting was commissioned in 1603 by the Franciscan College of Saint Bernardino.
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.
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