Gerard Seghers* (1591-1651)

The Ecstasy of Saint Francis

Details

Gerard Seghers* (1591-1651)
The Ecstasy of Saint Francis
oil on canvas
72½ x 54½in. (183 x 137.5cm.)

Provenance

Soult Collection, London as Caravaggio.
Anon. Sale, Sotheby's, London, July 8, 1987, lot 54 as Attributed to Gerard Seghers (£50,000=$80,500 to the present owner).

Literature

D. Bieneck, Gerard Seghers, 1992, p. 131, no. A2, illustrated on p. 132 as datable to before 1620 when the artist was in Italy.

Lot Essay

Another version, with differences including a third, music-making angel, is in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, Inv. no. 1976 (Bieneck, op. cit., p. 157, no. A31, and p. 158, illustrated).

The composition is very loosely derived from Giovanni Baglione's painting in the Davidson collection, Santa Barbara (for which, see A. Moir, The Italian Followers of Caravaggio, II, 1967, pl. 29). Vorsterman engraved the composition in the opposite sense (see P. Askew, The Angelic consolation of Saint Francis of Assisi in Post-Tridentine Italian Painting, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, XXXII, 1969, pl. 45a; and D. Bieneck, op. cit., pp. 158-9, no. A31a).