Incident from the Life of St. Francist
Early Último tercio del siglo XVI - XVII century. Wash, Pencil, Pencil ground, White lead, Grey-brown ink on yellow paper.Not on display
This and another drawing in the collection, similarly ascribed to Passignano and showing another scene from the life of St. Francis (Catalogue of the Sixteenth-Century Italian Drawings of the Museo del Prado, Passignano, Domenico, Ascribed to, inv. D03041), evidently belong to a series of drawings destined to be engraved, probably as book illustrations. Unfortunately, no such series of prints has so far been identified. It is hoped that the opportunity provided by this exhibition may perhaps lead to its discovery.
Although the saint is traditionally identified as the Cistercian, St. Bernard, this cannot be so for the figure wears his habit tied at the waist with a knotted girdle of rope, an attribute of Franciscan dress. The same scene is represented in one of a series of 36 drawings illustrating the life of St. Francis in the Albertina, Vienna, similarly attributed to Passignano (Birke and Kertesz, 1992-97, p. 384, inv. no. 730). Fewer participating figures appear in the equivalent Albertina drawing and the architectural setting is stark and monumental, nevertheless the central action is much the same. In both compositions St. Francis stands to the left amidst onlookers, a solitary companion at his side. In the Prado drawing, St. Francis disassociates himself from the document he is being presented with. His girdle of rope plays a key role, for he takes up one end of it in his left hand (his right if the composition were to be reversed in an engraving), as if to inscribe with it his signature. Where his signature would have appeared on the scroll, there is in its place a seraph´s head, with six wings — two single wings extended to each side, and two pairs, above and below, intertwined.
Turner, Nicholas, From Michelangelo to Annibale Carracci. A century of Italian drawings from the Prado, Chicago, Art Services International, 2008, p.170, 345
