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Saint Francis in Prayer | |
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Artist | Caravaggio |
Year | c. 1606 |
Medium | Oil on canvas |
Dimensions | 130 cm× 98 cm(51 in× 39 in) |
Location | Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome |
Saint Francis in Prayer (c. 1602-1604) is a painting from the Italian master Caravaggio, in the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica in Rome.
The painting is unrecorded and therefore difficult to date, or even to distinguish the original from later copies. John Gash (see references, below) identifies a version in the Chiesa dei Cappuccini as a good copy of a lost original identified by some scholars with a painting in the Church of San Pietro, Carpineto Romano (Museo di Palazzo Venezia). Helen Langdon, treating the same painting in her biography Caravaggio, refers to the version in Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, in the Palazzo Barberini. St Francis's life of poverty and humility was a popular subject in Caravaggio's age. Peter Robb makes the point that St Francis of Assisi, together with John the Baptist and St Jerome, "...make up the trio of alienated males, young, mature and old, brooding and remote from human society, that M (i.e. Caravaggio) painted again and again", becoming, in effect, private icons for Caravaggio's own troubled life.
In the course of a libel trial in 1603 Caravaggio's friend Orazio Gentileschi stated that he had lent the artist a monk's robe several months before, and this painting could be connected. Gentileschi's evidence seems to be the main argument behind a 1602/1604 date; but Robb, on the grounds of the austere approach and less painterly technique of the work, believes that it may date from 1606, when Caravaggio had fled Rome as an outlaw following a death in a street brawl.
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, known mononymously as Caravaggio, was an Italian painter active in Rome for most of his artistic life. During the final four years of his life, he moved between Naples, Malta, and Sicily until his death. His paintings have been characterized by art critics as combining a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, which had a formative influence on Baroque painting.
Annibale Carracci was an Italian painter and instructor, active in Bologna and later in Rome. Along with his brother and cousin, Annibale was one of the progenitors, if not founders of a leading strand of the Baroque style, borrowing from styles from both north and south of their native city, and aspiring for a return to classical monumentality, but adding a more vital dynamism. Painters working under Annibale at the gallery of the Palazzo Farnese would be highly influential in Roman painting for decades.
Carlo Saraceni was an Italian early-Baroque painter, whose reputation as a "first-class painter of the second rank" was improved with the publication of a modern monograph in 1968.
Domenico Zampieri, known by the diminutive Domenichino after his shortness, was an Italian Baroque painter of the Bolognese School of painters.
The Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica or National Gallery of Ancient Art is an art museum in Rome, Italy. It is the principal national collection of older paintings in Rome – mostly from before 1800; it does not hold any antiquities. It has two sites: the Palazzo Barberini and the Palazzo Corsini.
Giovanni Lanfranco was an Italian painter of the Baroque period.
Giovanni Baglione was an Italian Late Mannerist and Early Baroque painter and art historian. Although a prolific painter, Baglione is best remembered for his encyclopedic collection of biographies of the other artists working in Rome during his lifetime, and particularly his acrimonious relationship with the slightly younger artist Caravaggio through his art and writings.
Rest on the Flight into Egypt is a painting by the Italian Baroque master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, in the Doria Pamphilj Gallery, Rome. The Rest on the Flight into Egypt, like the Flight into Egypt, was a popular subject in art, but Caravaggio's composition, with an angel playing the viol to the Holy Family, is unusual.
Judith Beheading Holofernes is a painting of the biblical episode by Caravaggio, painted in c. 1598–1599 or 1602, in which the widow Judith stayed with the Assyrian general Holofernes in his tent after a banquet then decapitated him after he passed out drunk. The painting was rediscovered in 1950 and is part of the collection of the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica in Rome. The exhibition 'Dentro Caravaggio' Palazzo Reale, Milan, suggests a date of 1602 on account of the use of light underlying sketches not seen in Caravaggio's early work but characteristic of his later works. The exhibition catalogue also cites biographer artist Giovanni Baglione's account that the work was commissioned by Genoa banker Ottavio Costa.
The Conversion of Saint Paul, by the Italian painter Caravaggio, is housed in the Odescalchi Balbi Collection of Rome. It is one of at least two paintings by Caravaggio of the same subject, the Conversion of Paul. Another is The Conversion of Saint Paul on the Road to Damascus, in the Cerasi Chapel of Santa Maria del Popolo.
John the Baptist was the subject of at least eight paintings by the Italian Baroque artist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610).
David with the Head of Goliath, dated c. 1600-1601, is a painting by the Italian artist Caravaggio (1571–1610), housed in the Kunsthistorisches Museum Gemäldegalerie, Vienna. Peter Robb believes it was acquired by the conde de Villamediana in Naples between 1611 and 1617, as Giovanni Bellori records Villamediana as having returned to Spain with a half-figure of David by Caravaggio.
The Crowning with Thorns was the subject of two paintings by the Italian master Caravaggio. The first version, dated to around 1604–1605, is now in the Cassa di Risparmi e Depositi of Palazzo degli Alberti, Prato (Tuscany). The attribution to Caravaggio is disputed.
Saint Jerome Writing is a painting by the Italian master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio in 1607 or 1608, housed in the Oratory of St John's Co-Cathedral, Valletta, Malta. It can be compared with Caravaggio's earlier version of the same subject in the Borghese Gallery in Rome.
Bartolomeo Manfredi was an Italian painter, a leading member of the Caravaggisti of the early 17th century.
Leonello Spada was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, active in Rome and his native city of Bologna, where he became known as one of the followers of Caravaggio.
Orazio Borgianni was an Italian painter and etcher of the Mannerist and early-Baroque periods. He was the stepbrother of the sculptor and architect Giulio Lasso.
Events from the year 1604 in art.
Pietà is a c. 1600 oil on canvas painting by Annibale Carracci, the earliest surviving work by him on the subject, which was commissioned by Odoardo Farnese. It moved from Rome to Parma to Naples as part of the Farnese collection and is now in the National Museum of Capodimonte in Naples. It is one of many 16th century Bolognese paintings dedicated to the theme of the Pietà, and it is counted among Carracci's masterpieces.
Divine Love Conquering Earthly Love is an oil on canvas painting dating to 1602–1603, that is now held in the collection of the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica in Palazzo Barberini, Rome. It was painted by Italian painter Giovanni Baglione. It is the second version that Baglione painted of this subject; the first version is now in the Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen in Berlin. Both of these versions were painted for Cardinal Benedetto Giustiniani, an Italian clergyman.