Page 36 - Vision & Ecstasy - Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione's St. Francis.

and its direct naturalism makes a concentrated appeal to the spectator. Francis seems to wear a Capuchin
habit, though this is not entirely clear, but we do know that Orazio Gentileschi lent Caravaggio a Capuchin
habit.11

The Franciscans had long had a significant presence in Genoa, stretching back to the thirteenth century. San
Francesco di Castelletto, consecrated in 1302, became, from 1508, the church of the Conventuals; here were
the chapels and tombs of illustrious families and here the Grimaldi chapel was the repository of relics of the
Cross and crown of thorns, donated in 1322 in recognition of the Franciscans special devotion to the Passion of
Christ.The rite of the Adoration of the Cross, celebrated on Good Friday, was especially popular in Genoa and
would have taken place in this chapel.The Cross, placed on a cushion, was unveiled, and the Abbot prostrated
himself before it, singing the seven penitential psalms, and, at the close of the ceremony, he kissed the Cross.12
SS Annunziata del Vastato, whose costliness had so impressed Evelyn, underwent, over many years, a rich
embellishment, following a programme drawn up by the Observant Franciscans. It became one of the most richly
decorated churches in Genoa, where every surface glittered with sculptures, coloured marbles, stuccoes, gilt,
and, in the dizzyingly illusionistic frescoes of the vault, (1635-7) the fresco painter Giulio Benso staged, with
theatrical splendour, all the drama of the Annunciation. In sharpest contrast the Capuchins sought in their
buildings a severe and humble quality.They had long had a significant presence in Genoa, where the friars had
established themselves around 1530. Their principal church, the Chiesa della Concezione e Padre Santo,
displayed a series of paintings by Bernardo Castello, inspired by theTridentine demand for a didactic religious

11. B.Treffers,‘L’Arte Retro di Caravaggio. Naturalismo e riforma francescana nella Roma prebarocca’, in I Francescani in Liguria,
Atti del Convegno, ed. L.Magnani and L.Stagno, Genoa, 2009, p.56.Treffers stresses that the saint ‘sembra essere vestito da
capuccino’. For the loan of the habit, see M.Marini, Caravaggio “Pictor praestantissimus”, Rome 2005, p. 482.
Gentileschi himself painted several versions of St Francis receiving the Stigmata. and St Francis succoured by Angels, which is
it is tempting to connect with this loan of a robe. Perhaps the most notable is the painting in San Silvestro in Capite for which
the modello was exhibited atThe Matthiesen Gallery in 1985 – see Around 1610: The Onset of the Baroque, no. 18, p.68, colour
plate p.69.

12. M.W. Gibbons, Giambologna: Narrator of the Catholic Reformation, University of California Press, 1995, p. 67.
13. D.Sanguineti,‘Pittori Genovesi per l’Ordine dei Cappucini: da Bernardo Castello a Giuseppe Palmieri’, in Le Chiave del Paradiso: I

Tesori dei Capuccini della Provincia di Genova, exhibition catalogue 2003, pp. 45 -6.
14. M.C.Gallo,‘Cenni sull’icongrafia dei dipinti della Santissima Concezione con riferimento all’iconografia cappuccini nei secoli

XVII e XVIII’, in Vita e Cultura Cappucina; La Chiesa della SS.Concezione a Genova (Padre Santo), Regione Liguria 1984, pp. 49 –
53.The whereabouts of Castello’s St Francis receiving the Stigmata is now unknown; Paggi’s Immaculate Conception has been
removed from the high altar to the choir.

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