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Lot Essay
Another life study of Beata Pasitea Crogi, with her eyes closed in prayer and of approximately the same size, is in the Louvre (F. Viatte, op. cit., 1988, no. 524). A third portrait, in black and red chalk heightened with white, is in the Uffizi (inv. 4705 F).
Pasitea Crogi was the daughter of the painter Piero Crogi, an associate of Arcangelo Salimbeni. A capuchin nun, she was notorious for having worn men's clothes in order better to help the poor. In 1597 she left Siena for Florence, and settled in a house in Via della Colonna with eighteen of her companions, under the protection of Christina of Lorraine, wife of Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. In 1602, she went to France as part of the entourage of Ferdinando's niece Maria de'Medici, wife of King Henri IV of France. In France she formed part of a circle surrounding the Queen, dévotes et sorcières italiennes, denounced by the duc de Sully in his Mémoires. She was famous for her prophecies and predicted, for example, Concino Concini's plot to assassinate the Queen. Pasitea Crogi died in Siena on 14 May 1615 and was buried at the monastery of Saint Egidio. She was later beatified.
The identification of the portrait is due to an old annotation on the verso of the Louvre drawing and to the fact that the physiognomy of the sitter in the drawings closely corresponds to an anonymous portrait of Pasitea Crogi (P. Miscatelli, 'Pasitea Crogi e un suo ritratto inedito', La Diana, 1934, pp. 195-207).
Pasitea Crogi was the daughter of the painter Piero Crogi, an associate of Arcangelo Salimbeni. A capuchin nun, she was notorious for having worn men's clothes in order better to help the poor. In 1597 she left Siena for Florence, and settled in a house in Via della Colonna with eighteen of her companions, under the protection of Christina of Lorraine, wife of Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. In 1602, she went to France as part of the entourage of Ferdinando's niece Maria de'Medici, wife of King Henri IV of France. In France she formed part of a circle surrounding the Queen, dévotes et sorcières italiennes, denounced by the duc de Sully in his Mémoires. She was famous for her prophecies and predicted, for example, Concino Concini's plot to assassinate the Queen. Pasitea Crogi died in Siena on 14 May 1615 and was buried at the monastery of Saint Egidio. She was later beatified.
The identification of the portrait is due to an old annotation on the verso of the Louvre drawing and to the fact that the physiognomy of the sitter in the drawings closely corresponds to an anonymous portrait of Pasitea Crogi (P. Miscatelli, 'Pasitea Crogi e un suo ritratto inedito', La Diana, 1934, pp. 195-207).