Page 69 - Vision & Ecstasy - Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione's St. Francis.

© THE MATTHIESEN GALLERY, LONDON
ROYAL COLLECTION TRUST / © HER MAJESTY QUEEN ELIZABETH II 2013

Fig.25 G.B. CASTIGLIONE Fig.26 G.B. CASTIGLIONE Fig.27 G.B.CASTIGLIONE
The Immaculate Conception,The Royal
The Miracle of Saint Dominic of Soriano, The Crucifixion, Zerbone Collection, Collection,Windsor Castle.

Santa Maria di Castello, Genoa. Genoa.

Boisterous, vivid, and demonstrative, the one extant altarpiece from this last stage, the Miracle of Saint Dominic
of Soriano in Santa Maria di Castello (1654-55) represents an enthusiastic embrace of the language of the High
Baroque while accommodating design, eccentricities, and finish that go back to Van Dyck and Procaccini
(Fig. 25).40 Proliferating during the last decade, the devotional works on paper offer innumerable variations
upon either such basic Christian subjects as the Crucifixion (Fig. 26),41 or alternatively excerpts from the public
works.42 Principal among these are essays of the Nativity in ceaseless elaboration on the San Luca altarpiece and
of Saint Francis in every possible deduction from Osimo. The extraordinary group in The Royal Collection at
Windsor Castle alone includes one version of the entire composition that addresses its stylistic disjuncture (inv.

40. L. Magnani in Genoa 1990, cat. no. 24.
41. FormerlyThe Matthiesen Gallery now Genoa, Zerbone Collection; see Genoa 1992, cat. no. 61.
42. On the late works in oil on paper seeA. Percy,‘The LateYears: 1651-63/65’, in Philadelphia, Museum ofArt: Giovanni Benedetto

Castiglione.Master Draughtsman of the Italian Baroque, catalogue of the exhibition, Philadelphia 1971, pp. 38-44; M. Newcome,
‘Castiglione dopo il 1650’, Antichità viva, XXVII (1988), pp. 26-30; and Standring 2002, pp. 43-54.

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