Sold Without Reserve | GIOVANNI BATTISTA TIEPOLO | ST. FRANCIS OF PAOLA HOLDING A ROSARY, BOOK, AND STAFF

With Galerie Wolfgang Böhler, Bensheim, Germany;

Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's, 12 July 2001, lot 73;

Where acquired.

A. Morassi, A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings of G.B. Tiepolo, London 1962, p. 31, cat. no. 172, reproduced fig. 172 (as present whereabouts unknown).

Morassi dates this depiction of St. Francis of Paola to the first half of the 1730s, and connects it to two other half-length saints from the same period: St. Vincent Ferrer (formerly Venier collection, Milan) and St. Cajetan (Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, Rio de Janeiro). In the early 1730s, Tiepolo had established his reputation in Venice with the recent completion of the large Roman history canvases for the Ca'Dolfin, and he garnered many religious and secular commissions as a result.

St. Francis of Paola (1416 -1507) led a contemplative, austere life, and founded the order of the Hermits of St. Francis of Assisi in 1474. He was canonized in 1519. Tiepolo portrayed him in his characteristic brown habit with a short, round scapular, holding a staff and book and clutching a rosary. St. Francis's downward gaze and worn, aging face and hands indicate his life of self-deprivation. His motto, CHARITAS, appears in an aureole at upper right, signifying his service to the poor.