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- Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Saint-Francis-in-Ecstacy, oil on canvas, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut.
The shows in Italy honoring the four-hundredth anniversary of Caravaggio’s death have been so popular that authorities at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence have announced they are extending “Caravaggio e Caravaggeschi” at the Galleria Palatina until January 9th. Pilgrims can also take advantage of “Caravaggio e altri pittori del XVII secolo” at Castel Sismondo in Rimini until March 28th.
Among the fifteen paintings on loan by the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford for the show in Rimini is Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy
(1594 circa), one of Caravaggio’s first religious works. Not only does it showcase the artist’s earliest pictographic and metaphorical experiments with light, but also his unconventional presentation of standard religious themes. In this case, the seraph who imparted the stigmata to Francis on Mount Alverno is conspicuously absent. Caravaggio puts in its place a two-winged angel gently cradling the pierced friar in its arms. The seraph had been canonically present ever since Giotto’s first stunning renditions of the episode three centuries earlier. By omitting it, Caravaggio has poignantly evoked the interior dimension of the saint’s spiritual death and rebirth. With fingers lightly entwined in Francis’s cincture, the angel gently rotates the saint’s body towards us to give us a better view of the mysterious wound in his side, inviting us to follow him in uniting our sufferings to Christ’s. The Rimini show also includes rare paintings by Gentileschi, Strozzi, Zurbarán, and Caravaggio’s great admirer, Ribera.