(Monopoli 1612–1656 Naples)
Saint Paul the Hermit,
oil on canvas, 129.5 x 102 cm, framed

We are grateful to Nicola Spinosa for confirming the attribution after examination of the present painting in the original.

Francesco Fracanzano arrived Naples in the mid-1620s and entered the studio of Jusepe de Ribera. Fracanzano’s painting of Saint Paul the Hermit and Saint Anthony Abbot formerly in the church of Sant’ Onofrio dei Vecchi, Naples, bears the date 1634. This painting reveals the strong influence of Ribera, especially in terms of composition. Fracanzano deployed these same stylistic traits in his Stories of Saint Gregory Armenian painted for the two side altars of the chapel dedicated to that saint in the church of San Gregorio Armeno, Naples, both of which bear the date ‘1635’. Other paintings by the artist of the 1630s reveal the painter’s preference for majestic figures that echo late Michelangelesque compositions, depicted in full, rich robes, depicted with dense brush strokes. Towards the close of the 1630s, or the early years of the following decade, Fracanzano began to alter his pictorial language, seemingly influenced by the work of Giovanni Lanfranco who had been in Naples since 1634. Indeed, from the 1640s Fracanzano’s approach to the human figure, was now rendered with a new degree of emaciation, depicted with a free and fluid stroke of the brush,

The present painting belongs to this latter phase of the artist’s production. The figure depicted in the guise of the hermit closely recalls the figure type of the man wearing a turban showing the body of Christ in the Ecce Homo that is signed and dated 1647, formerly in the collection of Morton B. Harris, New York, and now in the Palmer Museum. The same qualities apply to the bony body of the Saint Paul depicted here, whose torso is similar to that of the above-mentioned Christ, and whose arm, in a manner characteristic to many works by Fracanzano is elongated. This figure type of the hermit can also be compared to God the Father seen in the upper quadrant of the Death of Saint Joseph, the last dated work known by the artist, executed in 1652 for the Archconfraternity of the Trinità dei Pellegrini, Naples.

The intense realism of the still life passage in the present painting, with the crow grasping the bread in its beak in the upper part of the composition reveals a fresh interpretation of Ribera’s influence and of the artist’s technique of the 1630s developed in the wake of Ribera.