Page 26 - Vision & Ecstasy - Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione's St. Francis.

Renaissance and Baroque EuropeanArt. Our joint enthusiasm resulted in a great collection, now sadly dispersed,
and a lot of fun and excitement. Basia had a passion for all things related to St Francis, hence her desire to live in
Assisi, and it is therefore fitting that this catalogue, whose subject matter is St Francis'Visions and Ecstasy, should
record our friendship and also our professional relationship. One can only wish that there were more enthusiastic
collectors just like her today with such taste and not just those who only follow fashion or a trend for
ContemporaryArt. It therefore seems totally appropriate that after a space of thirty two years one of the most
seminal paintings from our first exhibition, Important Italian Baroque paintings 1600 – 1700,should return to the
fold rather than be exposed to the auctioneer’s block.Thus it was that I used every endeavour to ensure that
Castiglione’s masterpiece of St Francis in Ecstasy should appear in these pages, back with the gallery rather than
in a mundane auction catalogue. Some will, no doubt, accuse me of indulging in a Proustian fantasy,‘À la Recherche
duTemps Perdu’.To such critics I would quote from one of Martial’s Epigrams16 ‘Living double, is he who also knows
how to enjoy the past!’ It is also coincidentally appropriate that this catalogue should appear at precisely the
moment that a new pope is installed - Francis. Basia would have approved!

In Bonaventure’s Life of St Francis17 he highlights a mystical experience Francis had in the beginning of his
conversion.The experience is an important key to Francis’ style of prayer – a style filled with burning affection
and love. The incident happened after he had found God by embracing a leper he met along the way. Bonaventure
tells us that shortly after this episode, Francis ‘began to seek out solitary places [where] he prayed incessantly
with unutterable groaning.... One day while Francis was praying in a secluded spot and had become totally
absorbed in God through his extreme fervour, Jesus Christ appeared to him nailed to the Cross. Francis’ soul
melted at the sight, writes Bonaventure‘and the memory of Christ’s passion was so impressed on the innermost
recesses of his heart that from that hour, whenever Christ’s crucifixion came to his mind, he could scarcely contain
his tears and his sighs…’. The vision of God’s all out love for him – even to the point of dying on the Cross –
conveyed itself so vividly to Francis that he began serving the lepers ‘with a feeling of intimate devotion,’ often
kissing them ‘with great compassion.’ More than this other writers tell us that Francis was so overwhelmed by
Christ’s great love for him that the little saint traversed the countryside weeping and proclaiming: “Love is not
loved! Love is not loved!” By this he was trying to convey the message to everyone he met that God is madly in
love with each one of us but that we fail to respond with the same kind of burning love! This is the sentiment of
religious ecstasy that Castiglione is conveying to the beholder.

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