Saint Francis in ecstasy,
inscribed upper right with an old inventory number ‘2(...)2’ and with the emblem of the Colonna family lower right,
oil on canvas, 85.5 x 69 cm, unframed

Provenance:
possibly Colonna collection, Rome (according to the emblem of the family lower right);
Private European collection

This present painting represents Saint Francis in ecstasy, before the appearance of the stigmata. The figure is accompanied by objects, symbolic of the saint’s meditation on death: the skull and the rosary. The pictorial rendering is of great refinement and is especially sensitive to, and focused upon, the description of the heavy cloth of the saint’s habit and the knot of the thick cord that binds his waist; Saint Francis’ hands and the skull are executed with a carefully tuned balance of chiaroscuro effects.

In the lower right corner of the canvas there is the emblem of a column printed in gold, which signals its likely possession by one of the most celebrated and powerful Roman families: the Colonna. Dating to the same period as this mark at upper right is a partially legible number, possibly ‘232’. It has regrettably not been possible to identify this work in the Colonna inventories so far published (Eduard A. Safarik, Collezione dei dipinti Colonna: inventari 1611-1795, Munich, New Providence, London, Paris 1996), but the collection was vast and divided between many branches of family.

The painting is to be attributed to an artist active in Naples during the second decade of the seventeenth century, under the influence of the bold realism of the works made in the city by Caravaggio during two successive stays, in 1606–1607 and again in 1609–1610. Moreover, the painting appears not to reflect the influence of Jusepe de Ribera who arrived in Naples in 1616 and propagated a different interpretation of Caravaggio’s example, thereby exerting a distinctive influence on the artists active in the city in subsequent decades. In particular, Spinosa suggests – on stylistic grounds – an attribution for the present work to Carlo Sellitto (1581–1614) or, more probably, to the earliest work of his apprentice, Filippo Vitale (1585–1650). The present Saint Francis in ecstasy might therefore be placed in time, a little earlier than the Liberation of Saint Peter from prison in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes (inv. no. 30).

It is recorded that during his second Neapolitan stay Caravaggio executed a Saint Francis receiving the stigmata for the Fenaroli chapel in Sant’Anna dei Lombardi, while in the Cortona chapel of the same church, Carlo Sellitto was at work on a canvas that also represented the founder of the Franciscan order. It should not therefore be excluded that the present painting in some way reflects Caravaggio’s pictorial invention, which thus far, without any convincing solution in sight, has remained lost.