Saint Francis of Assisi

The Artist: In his Lives of the Artists, Giorgio Vasari referred to Antoniazzo as "among the best painters then in Rome." Antoniazzo was, indeed, the most important Roman-born painter of the fifteenth century and his work is essential to any history of painting in the papal city. Not surprisingly, the prestige he enjoyed during his lifetime was completely overshadowed by the arrival of Raphael and Michelangelo and their work in the Vatican and Sistine Chapel. Only in the nineteenth century was his importance once again recognized.

Antoniazzo came from a family of painters and he emerges as an independent artist in the 1460s, his earliest work being a Madonna and Child from an altarpiece dated 1464 (Museo Civico, Rieti). There we encounter an artist open to some of the defining ideas of Renaissance painting as transmitted in Rome and the surrounding region (Lazio) by Benozzo Gozzoli and the Marchigian painter Giovanni Boccati, who had preceded Antoniazzo in the decoration of a chapel in Santa Maria in Aracoeli and whose work shows a similar interest in antiquarian details, which in the case of Boccati was a consequence of a visit to Padua, with its strong antiquarian/humanist culture. Antoniazzo also responded to Piero della Francesca’s work in the Vatican in 1459, and in this respect his art runs parallel with that of another regional artist, Lorenzo da Viterbo (ca. 1444–after 1476). It is in the 1470s and early 1480s that Antoniazzo’s art takes on its mature properties: a sharp delineation of form and effects of light together with compositional clarity. He owed much to the presence in Rome of Melozzo da Forlì (1439–1494), who arrived in the years around 1470 and collaborated with Antoniazzo in the Biblioteca Segreta of the Vatican in 1480–81, and to Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449–1494), who between 1475 and 1476 worked on the frescoes in the Sala Latina in the Biblioteca Vaticana and in 1483 was one of the painters assembled to fresco the walls of the Sistine Chapel; among those artists were Perugino, Botticelli, Signorelli, Cosimo Roselli, Bartolomeo della Gatta, and Biagio di Antonio. All three of The Met’s works by the artist date from this phase of Antoniazzo’s career (see also 06.1214, 41.190.9), usually regarded as his finest.

Antoniazzo received important commisisons from old Roman families, such as the Colonna (see below) and the Orsini, as well as from members of the curia. Among his most ambitious fresco cycles is the decoration of the choir of San Giovanni Evangelista in Tivoli (post 1481) and the vast fresco in the apse of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme (1492–95), undertaken in collaboration with other artists.

Another aspect of his activity centered on the restoration of celebrated medieval images/icons and the creation of devotional paintings based on their compositions. Antoniazzo was not the only artist to do this. Prior to 1470 Alessandro Sforza, the ruler of Pesaro, commissioned Melozzo da Forlì to make a copy of the thirteenth-century Madonna and Child in Santa Maria del Popolo, and no less a figure than the Greek scholar Cardinal Bessarione (1403–1474) had similar copies of revered icons made by Antoniazzo. Perhaps the most impressive of these "copies"—all of which are updated in style—is a large panel of the Madonna and Child commissioned in 1486 for the cathedral of Velletri (Museo Diocesano, Velletri), the composition of which was inspired by a venerated painting in Sant’Agostino, Rome. The Met’s Saint Francis may also make a reference to an earlier, thirteenth-century image.

The Picture: Saint Francis (1181/82–1226) is shown standing on a pink marble pavement against a black background. His hands and feet display the stigmata he received on Mount La Verna two years before his death and a slit in his habit reveals the wound in his side. These are in emulation of Christ’s wounds on the cross. To contemporaries, the stigmata were evidence of the degree to which Francis’s life conformed to that of Christ (Franciscus alter Christus). In one hand the saint holds a crucifix, in the other a closed book; the cord around his waist is knotted, as was typical of the Franciscan habit. His gaze is directed toward the viewer, whom he addresses with parted lips, making this a "speaking" image. The front face of the dais bears the coat of arms of the Colonna family—one of the most ancient noble families in Rome—together with the name of the patron, Clemente Brigante Colonna, who, prior to his death in 1481, was governor of Tivoli and captain of the Tiburtine guards. Notices of the painting have been gathered together by Forastieri (1991).

In his will, Clemente Brigante Colonna reversed his desire to be buried in the family tomb in the church of San Biagio, Tivoli, which was not ready, and instead indicated as his place of repose the chapel formerly dedicated to Saint Michael and then to Saint Francis in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, Tivoli; Pius II had transferred the church to the Observant branch of the Franciscans following his visit in 1461. The Colonna family's association with Saint Francis goes back to the thirteenth century: to Matteo di Odoardo and his brother Jacopo Antonio Colonna, who as bishop of Tivoli (1210–19) had experienced a miracle of Saint Francis following the saint's death (scene 28 in the famous fresco cycle in the upper church of San Francesco in Assisi, known as The Liberation of Peter the Heretic). Clemente Brigante gained rights over the chapel in 1477, transferring them from the chapel of Saint Bernardino, narrowing the probable period during which the picture was painted to 1477–81. The picture may well have been intended to decorate the altar but by the nineteenth century it was hung on a lateral wall. It was sold sometime after 1886.

The fact that the panel does not belong to a larger, multi-panel altarpiece but was always intended to show the isolated figure against a gold background strongly suggests that there was an intention to recall a work like the highly venerated, thirteenth-century image in the oratory at San Francesco a Ripa in Rome (see fig. 1 above), where Francis was reputed to have stayed. That work is by or attributed to Margaritone d'Arezzo, who made a speciality of such paintings. An active member of the confraternity of the Gonfalone, Antoniazzo was keenly aware of the way such references enhanced the devotional function of his images by being based on a venerated prototype.

Keith Christiansen 2018

Inscription: Inscribed (along bottom): CLEMENS·BRIGAI S·DE·COLVMNA

private chapel of the Brigante Colonna family, church of Santa Maria Maggiore, Tivoli; [Constantini, Florence, by ca. 1901–ca. 1909; sold to Platt]; Dan Fellows Platt, Englewood, N.J. (ca. 1909–?d. 1938); ?his widow, Ethel Bliss Platt, Englewood (from 1938); [Wildenstein, New York and London, bought from Platt; by 1943–2003; sale, Christie's, London, July 9, 2003, no. 78, for £94,850 to Johnson]; Barbara Piasecka Johnson, Jasna Polana, Princeton, N.J. (2003–d. 2013; sale, Christie's, New York, January 29, 2014, no. 128, to Podrug); Dinko Podrug family, New York (2014–17)

New York. Wildenstein. "Italian Paintings," 1947, no. 36.

London. Wildenstein. "Highly Important Paintings by Rembrandt, Boucher, Cézanne, Hals, Guardi, Gauguin, and others," June 17–August 1, 1959, no. 13.

London. Helikon. "Exhibition of Old Masters," June–September 1974, unnumbered cat.

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Casimiro da Roma. Memorie istoriche delle chiese, e dei conventi dei frati minori della provincia romana. Rome, 1744, p. 353 [2nd ed., 1845, p. 489], mentions this picture in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, Tivoli; noting the coat of arms and name appearing along the bottom, believes it was commissioned by Clemente Brigante Colonna, who in 1477 took ownership of the chapel in which it hangs.

Filippo Alessandro Sebastiani. Viaggio a Tivoli: antichissima città latino-sabina fatto nel 1825. Fuligno, 1828, p. 356, mentions a painting of Saint Francis in the Brigante Colonna chapel in Santa Maria Maggiore.

Francesco Bulgarini. Notizie storiche antiquarie statistiche ed agronomiche intorno all'antichissima citta' di Tivoli e suo territorio. Rome, 1848, p. 77, refers to it without attribution as a very valuable work of the fifteenth century and locates it in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore.

Fabio Gori. Viaggio pittorico-antiquario da Roma a Tivoli e Subiaco. Rome, 1855, p. 44, as in the Brigante Colonna family chapel in Santa Maria Maggiore.

Raffaele del Re. Tivoli e i suoi monumenti antichi e moderni. Rome, 1886, p. 32.

F. Mason Perkins. "Dipinti italiani nelle raccolte americane." Rassegna d'arte 10 (July 1910), p. 100, ill., attributes it to Antoniazzo Romano and notes that it is in the collection of D. F. Platt, Englewood, New Jersey; sees the influence of Fiorenzo di Lorenzo; calls it a late work.

F. Mason Perkins. "Tre dipinti di Antoniazzo Romano." Rassegna d'arte umbra 2 (April 15, 1911), p. 36 n. 1.

F. Mason Perkins. "Dipinti italiani nella raccolta Platt: Parte I." Rassegna d'arte 11 (January 1911), p. 6.

J[oseph]. A[rcher]. Crowe and G[iovanni]. B[attista]. Cavalcaselle. A History of Painting in Italy: Umbria, Florence, and Siena from the Second to the Sixteenth Century. Ed. Tancred Borenius. Vol. 5, Umbrian and Sienese Masters of the Fifteenth Century. London, 1914, p. 280 n. 1, list it as by Antoniazzo in the Platt collection, Englewood, New Jersey.

Collection of Mediaeval and Renaissance Paintings. Cambridge, Mass., 1919, p. 157.

Salomon Reinach. Répertoire de peintures du moyen age et de la renaissance (1280–1580). Vol. 6, Paris, 1923, p. 45, no. 1, ill. (sketch).

Roberto Longhi. "In favore di Antoniazzo Romano." Vita artistica 2 (November–December 1927), p. 233 n.

Bernhard Berenson. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Oxford, 1932, p. 26, lists it as an early work, in the Platt collection.

Raimond van Marle. The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting. Vol. 15, The Renaissance Painters of Central and Southern Italy. The Hague, 1934, p. 254, sees a close stylistic similarity to the lateral panels of the altarpiece of the Madonna and Child with Saints Anthony of Padua and Francis, which is dated 1464 (Museo Civico, Rieti).

Bernhard Berenson. Pitture italiane del rinascimento. Milan, 1936, p. 22.

Italian Paintings. Exh. cat., Wildenstein. New York, 1947, unpaginated, no. 36, ill., dates it about 1464 due to its affinity with the lateral panels of the Rieti triptych and believes that it originally formed part of a similar altarpiece.

Bernard Berenson. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Central Italian and North Italian Schools. London, 1968, vol. 1, p. 15.

Gisela Doerk Noehles. "Antoniazzo Romano: Studien zur Quattrocentomalerei in Rom." PhD diss., Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität zu Münster, 1973, pp. 154, 207–8, no. 58, fig. 49B, calls it a late work based on its similarity to the figure of Saint Francis in "Madonna and Child with Saints Paul and Francis" (ca. 1488; Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome).

Gilberto Algranti. Exhibition of Old Masters. Exh. cat., Helikon. London, 1974, unpaginated, ill., states that it was commissioned by Clemente Brigante Colonna, who died in 1481, and that it hung in the private chapel of Palazzo Brigante Colonna, Tivoli, until the end of the nineteenth century; dates it to 1475, when the palazzo was built, and sees the influence of Piero della Francesca.

Benedict Nicolson. "Current and Forthcoming Exhibitions." Burlington Magazine 116 (July 1974), p. 418, fig. 73.

Gregory Hedberg. "Antoniazzo Romano and His School." PhD diss., New York University, 1980, vol. 1, pp. 34, 87 n. 161, p. 168, no. 19; vol. 2, fig. 20, states that it was sold from the Palazzo Brigante Colonna in about 1901; dates it between 1475, when the Palazzo Brigante Colonna was built, and 1481, when Clemente Brigante Colonna died.

Roberto Cannatà in Un'antologia di restauri: 50 opere d'arte restaurate dal 1974 al 1981. Exh. cat., Palazzo Barberini. Rome, 1982, p. 32 n. 13, under no. 7, rejects the attribution to Antoniazzo.

Bruno Forastieri. "Un S. Francesco 'Tiburtino', Antoniazzo Romano e la committenza Colonna." Alma Roma 32 (January–April 1991), pp. 3–15, ill., relates the history of the painting.

Anna Cavallaro. Antoniazzo Romano e gli Antoniazzeschi: una generazione di pittori nella Roma del Quattrocento. Udine, 1992, pp. 189–90, no. 14, fig. 31, colorpl. XXI, states that although it was in the private chapel of the Brigante Colonna palace until 1901, it probably originally hung in the chapel of San Francesco in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, which was patronized by the Brigante Colonna family since 1447 [sic for 1477; see Casimiro 1744].

Antonio Paolucci. Antoniazzo Romano: catalogo completo dei dipinti. Florence, 1992, p. 87, no. 22, ill.

Anna Cavallaro in Antoniazzo Romano: Pictor Urbis, 1435/1440–1508. Ed. Anna Cavallaro and Stefano Petrocchi. Exh. cat., Palazzo Barberini, Rome. Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2013, pp. 31, 46 n. 68, fig. 7 (color), notes that it was commissioned for a chapel in Santa Maria Maggiore in Tivoli by Clemente Brigante Colonna, the governor of Tivoli and captain of the tiburtine militia, and likely dates to 1480–81, when Antoniazzo was associated with Melozzo da Forli.

This work may not be lent.