Saint Francis in Prayer

Prayer, and what is in front of it

Francis of Assisi carries the stigmata, and a picture that shows him praying rather than receiving them needs the supporting objects to do the naming: the roped habit, the skull, the crucifix, the bare place. That set is shared with several other hermit saints, which is exactly why the habit matters — a brown cord-knotted robe is a Franciscan sign before it is anything else.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the work to 1610. The location field carries two entries rather than one: Santa Maria della Concezione de Cappuccini, Rome, Italy, National Gallery of Ancient Art (GNAA), Rome, Italy. The dimensions are 130 x 98 cm, an upright close in size to the painter's other Franciscan entry in this catalogue. It is filed under male portraiture and Religion, with the styles given as Baroque and Tenebrism; the measured colour family is brown.

Two locations in one field

A record that names two collections is recording a question rather than answering it. This note does not resolve it, and the entry gives no basis for resolving it — what can be said is that the catalogue holds both names and that a reader looking for the work should expect to find the question rather than a single shelf. 118 of the 611 works here record only a private collection.