Federico Barocci Circle

Italian school of the seventeenth century. Circle of FEDERICO BAROCCI (Urbino, 1535-1612).
"St. Francis of Assisi receiving the stigmata".
Oil on copper.
Attached report issued by D. Ismael Gutierrez Pastor.
Measurements: 23 x 17 cm; 40 x 35 cm (frame).

The copper in tender represents St. Francis of Assisi receiving the stigmata. It maintains as a fundamental element of the composition the figure of the saint, similar to that of several works by Federico Barocci. Following the words of Ismael Gutierrez in his study, "This painting on copper refers first of all to the famous canvas of "Il Perdono di Assisi" (or "Pardon of Assisi") that presides over the main altar of the church of the Franciscan Observants of St. Francis in the Italian city of Urbino. It depicts the apparition of Christ in glory, flanked by the Virgin Mary and St. Nicholas, to St. Francis of Assisi as he prays kneeling in the chapel of the Portiuncula. It was commissioned by Nicolò Ventura and painted between 1574 and 1576 (oil on canvas, 427 x 236 cm). Its presentation sketch included the figure of St. Clare of Assisi (oil on panel, 110 x 71 cm), which is preserved in the Gallerie Nazionale delle Marche in Urbino, assuming that the client would impose the substitution of St. Clare, a Franciscan nun, for St. Nicholas, patron saint of her onomastic. In these two paintings, the figure of St. Francis of Assisi is fully defined and has the same composition as in the painting on copper". In this same study Gutierrez compares the present work with three others by the Italian master (one of them is a burin engraving, dated 1581, which has the peculiarity of reproducing the figure of St. Francis in reverse to the original composition and another painting of the same subject (tempera on panel, 146 x 115 cm), which is preserved in the Pinacoteca Civica Augusto Vernarecci in Fossombrone (Italy). A third is St. Francis of Assisi Receiving the Stigmata, preserved in the Vatican Pinacoteca (oil on canvas, 165 x 118 cm; inv. no. 380), which presents the figure of St. Francis in a landscape and Brother Leo in the distance, in isolation. Gutierrez concludes "The popularity of "Il perdono de Assisi" caused the painting to be engraved by other artists and reproduced in numerous prints throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The most important of all was that of Francesco Villamena (1564-1624), who engraved it as a whole in 1588, maintaining the sense of the composition (L. Olsen, op. cit., 1962, cat. no. 27. A. Emiliani, op. cit., 1985, 1, pp. 104-115). The Flemish engraver Boetius Adam Bolwert (1580-1633) also engraved it in the first third of the 17th century". He concludes that our painter could have based the figure of the saint on this print by Francesco Villamena.