The Vision of St Francis of Assisi(Hermanos Garcia)
Within a makeshift hollow by a twisted tree trunk, Saint Francis of Assisi is seated, almost
semi-prone and leaning to the left, his hand clasped in prayer, his gaze turned upwards
and beyond the composition. On the right, at the rim of the hollow is a closed bible or
prayer book and, apart from the cassock, it is the only reference to his monasticism. The
strongly modelled cassock conceals the saints feet and his body is drawn into a strong diagonal, which is
mirrored by the horizon line, but is in opposition to the pose of the angel that emerges in high relief from
the background, seated upon clouds and playing a guitar-like instrument. The scene specifically refers to
an episode in the saints later life, when, exhausted almost to the point of despair, an angel appeared and
serenaded him and his spirit was uplifted by its heavenly music. The fact that both Francis and the angel
focus their gaze upwards, outside the composition, adds to the works overall sense of mysticism.
Saint Francis of Assisi (11811230) was born of an aristocratic Umbrian family and famously eschewed
his birthright to devote his life to Christ. While still a young man he founded the Franciscan order
(1209), an evangelical confraternity that became renowned for the severe simplicity, humility and
voluntary poverty of its friars. Three years before his death, physically exhausted and ill, Francis ceded
control of the community to retire in prayer and contemplation. Throughout his life, Francis reportedly
experienced visions, the most important being his vision of the crucified Christ, on which occasion he
received the stigmata, the marks of Christs wounds, which became a standard feature of his
iconography.
This angelic vision in the wilderness is noted as an important event in Franciss hagiography, and first
appears in 1261 in the Leyenda maior by Saint Buenaventura (12171274), where he describes how
Francis, weary and suffering from chronic illness, wished his soul to be lifted by music but since his
solitude made this impossible, heaven sent down an angel to soothe and entertain him.1 Allegedly, when
Francis heard the celestial music, he looked around him to see who was playing and seeing no one,
eventually looked up in the sky and saw a music-making angel that appeared to advance from and
retreat into the clouds, according to the intensity of its playing. The angels music was so sweetly
ethereal that it filled Francis with the Holy Spirit, and he felt as if he had already ascended into heaven.
Francis then returned to the monastery and related his vision to his brother friars, who, in turn, spread
word of it as proof of his sainthood.
Traditionally, this subject is set in Franciss cell, where he lies on a simple cot, surrounded by various
objects of meditation and mortification (the crucifix, a skull, a scourge, and so on), with a fellow friar
sleeping nearby. Several engravings of the subject using this interior composition were widely circulated
in early seventeenth-century Spain, one of the most copied being a 1604 engraving by Aegidius Sadeler
(Netherlands, 15701629) after a painting by the Veneto artist Paolo Piazza (15601621). When
Francisco Ribalta painted this subject for the Capuchin monastery in Valencia, he based his
composition on the print, but added another monk and a sheep. Later, working in a more tenebrist
aesthetic, a young Esteban Murillo placed the scene in a dark, indeterminate interior with Francis
listening to the angel playing a viola.2
Here, however, the brothers appear to have based their composition on an engraving by Agostino
Carracci after Francesco Vanni (Fig. 8),3 which shows Francis lying in a field, by a tree trunk or a rock,
as in the present relief, but cradling a Crucifix, his face turned away from the angel and his eyes closed.
Vannis tightly focused composition is more narrative than that in the northern engraving (which is anecdotal) and is divided obliquely into two zones: the foreground with the saint, rocks and tree; and
the background where the angel floats above a wooded river landscape. Vannis angel appears to have
particularly inspired the brothers since they not only replicated it almost identically in an Infant Baptist
in the Wilderness in Malaga (Fig. 9), but in the present work gave their guitar-playing angel the same
widely outstretched wings and a similar split-skirted costume painted in a very Mannerist colour
combination of rose pink and verdigris.
The work is similar in technique and composition to the other dated reliefs exhibited here. In all four
sculptures, the saint is placed in an enclosed rocky or wooded foreground, before a painted landscape
on the right, or, in this case, a plastic rendering of a musical angel. However, the Saint Francis relief
shows a more angular approach to modelling, particularly in the cassock and the angels tunic, which
possibly derives from the engraving, but also points towards an earlier date. The brothers painted the
thick folds of the cassock with fine undulating lines, rendered with great delicacy and refinement to
reproduce the pattern of serge, a cheap type of woollen cloth. This is a technique generally associated
with the work of Pedro de Mena, who, according to art historians, inherited it from his master Alonso
Cano. However, as this work clearly shows, this was evidently not a trait exclusive to these Granadine
artists, who in fact post-date the brothers.
If we compare the work to the other three exhibited sculptures, or, indeed, to any of the brothers
various versions of Ecce Homo, we see clear similarities in the anatomical modelling, particularly in the
pose and musculature of the angels legs, which closely parallel those of the 1625 Saint John the Baptist
in the Wilderness. Equally, the face of the saint is modelled and painted with remarkable delicacy and
careful attention to detail and eloquently expresses the saints conflicting reactions, caught between his
rapturous appreciation of the angels lovely music and the understandable shock of seeing it emerge
from the clouds.
Considering the varying approaches to modelling in the drapery, the saints face and the angels legs,
and the Mannerist style and palette of the angels tunic, we should consider this Saint Francis relief to
pre-date the Penitent Saint Jerome in Puerto Rico, which is dated to 1619.
1 J. R. LEGÍSIMA and L. GÓMEZ CANEDO, San Francisco de
Asís. Escritos, Florecillas, Biografías, Madrid 1965, pp.
496497.
2 Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Vision to Saint Francis,
16451646, oil on canvas, Madrid, Real Academia de Bellas
Artes de San Fernando.
3 A. BARTSCH, The Illustrated Bartsch, New York 1980, vol.
XVII, 196, p. 3. This engraving also served as a model for
several other reliefs including the Saint John the Baptist
Comforted by an Angel (School of Granada, collection of a
cloistered monastery, Madrid); see also B. NAVARRETTE
PRIETO, La estampa como modelo en el Barroco andaluz,
included in Actas del Congreso Internacional Andalucía
Barroca, first session, part of a symposium held in
September 2007, published in Andalucía Barroca, Seville
2009, p. 165166