Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata (van Eyck?)

Saint Francis of Assisi Receiving the Stigmata is the name given to two unsigned paintings completed around 1428–32 that art historians usually attribute to the Flemish artist, Jan van Eyck. The panels are nearly identical, apart from a considerable difference in size. Both are small paintings: the larger measures 29.3 cm x 33.4 cm and is in the Sabauda Gallery in Turin, Italy; the smaller panel is 12.7 cm x 14.6 cm and in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The earliest documentary evidence is in the 1470 inventory of Anselme Adornes of Bruges's will; he may have owned both panels. From the 19th to mid-20th centuries, most scholars attributed them either to a pupil or follower of van Eyck's working from a design by the master.

The paintings show a famous incident from the life of Saint Francis of Assisi, who is shown kneeling by a rock as he receives the stigmata of the crucified Christ on the palms of his hands and soles of his feet. Behind him are rock formations, shown in great detail, and a panoramic landscape that seems to relegate the figures to secondary importance. This treatment of Francis is the first such to appear in northern Renaissance art. The arguments attributing the works to van Eyck are circumstantial and based mainly on the style and quality of the panels. A later, third version is in the Museo del Prado in Madrid, but is weaker and strays significantly in tone and design.

Between 1983 and 1989 the paintings underwent technical examination and were extensively restored and cleaned. Technical analysis of the Philadelphia painting established that the wood panel comes from the same tree as that of two paintings definitively attributed to van Eyck, and that the Italian panel has underdrawings of a quality that it is thought could only have come from him. After nearly 500 years, the paintings were reunited in 1998 in an exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Today the consensus is that both were painted by the same hand.

The paintings may have belonged to the Adornes family of Bruges. A copy of a will written in 1470 by Anselme Adornes, a member of one of the leading families in Bruges, was found in 1860. As he left for pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Adornes bequeathed to his two daughters in convents two paintings he describes as by van Eyck. He described one as "with a portrait of St Francis, made by the hand of Jan van Eyck", ("een tavereele daerinne dat Sint-Franssen in portrature van meester Ians handt van Heyck ghemaect staet").

...
Wikipedia