Page 43 - Vision & Ecstasy - Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione's St. Francis.

Agony in the Garden.22 Here it is his separateness, and the way in
which he is kneeling, that calls to mind such a famous Agony in the
Garden as that by Correggio (Fig.11). The analogy between
Gethsemane and Mount La Verna suggests St Francis’ perfect
conformity to Christ. The startling touches of red, too, evoke the
crown of thorns, in a way that recalls Van Dyck’s painting of the
head of Christ in the Crucifixion.

St Francis’ face, startlingly pallid, and pressed against the
monochrome Crucifix, is the focus of the composition, and the
saint seems to be‘carried out of himself’.23 There is a movement
from dark to light, from the shadowed face of Christ, close to
Francis, and symbolic of death, to the patch of light behind the
saint’s head, with its promise of salvation in the darkness of the
landscape. Closest in feeling to this work are the paintings of the
Milanese Francesco del Cairo, who painted many versions of the
Agony in the Garden and St Francis in Ecstasy, with a strange lunar
poetry and metallic light (Fig.12). Both artists represent the
deepening of an old tradition and the movement towards a more
visionary and resonant art.

HELEN LANGDON

22. Askew 1969 pp.292-294. Fig. 12. FRANCESCO DEL CAIRO
23. St Bonaventure, 1868, p.123 St Francis in Ecstasy, Musei Civici del Castello
Sforzesco, Milan

s

45