The Ecstasy of Saint Francis

CC0 Public Domain Designation

1601

Giovanni Baglione (Italian, 1566–1643)

Generally considered Giovanni Baglione’s most accomplished painting, this work is his first known “Caravaggesque” picture—that is, one that incorporates the innovative use of realistic figure types and dramatic lighting favored by the painter Caravaggio beginning in the late 1590s. Saint Francis swoons in ecstasy into the arms of an angel after meditating on the instruments used to torture Jesus, presented by another angel on the left. Baglione’s brief Caravaggesque phase ended after 1603, when, in an infamous trial, he accused Caravaggio of slander for having distributed a series of malicious poems about him.

Status: On View, Gallery 211
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: Giovanni Baglione
Title: The Ecstasy of Saint Francis
Place: Italy (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1601
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 155.3 × 116.8 cm (61 1/8 × 46 in.); Framed: 188.6 × 151.1 × 7.6 cm (74 1/4 × 59 1/2 × 3 in.)
Credit Line: Bequest of Suzette Morton Davidson
Reference Number: 2002.378
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/160030/manifest.json

Domenico Montelatici,, Villa Borghese fuori di Porta Pinciana, (Rome, 1700), 216.
Roberto Longhi, “Baglione,” Encyclopedia Italiana 5 (1930-8), 851-853.
Michele de Benedetti, “Un Caravaggio già della Borghese ritrovato,” Emporium (July 1949): 3-14.
Carla Guglielmi, “Intorno all’opera pittorica di Giovanni Baglione,” Bolletino d’Arte vol (1954): 313-314.
Valentino Martinelli, “L’Amor divino ‘tutto ignudo’ di Giovanni Baglione e la cronologia dell’intermezzo caravaggesco.” Arte Antica e Moderna 5 (Jan./Mar. 1959): 82-90.
Roberto Longhi, “Giovanni Baglione e il quadro del processo,” Paragone 163 (1963): 23- 31.
Alfred Moir, The Italian Followers of Caravaggio (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), vol. 1, 29-30, vol. 2 ,45 no. 10, fig. 29.
Pamela Askew, “The Angelic Consolation of St. Francis of Assisi in Post-Tridentine Italian Painting,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 32 (1969): 280-306.
Dizionario Enciclopedico Bolaffi dei Pittori e Degli Incisori Italiani: Dall’XI al XX Secolo vol. : Abacco-Bellori (Torino: Giulio Bolaffi, 1972), 286 (ill.).
Herwarth Röttgen, ed., Il Cavalier d’Arpino, exh. cat. (Rome: Luca, 1973), 101.
Luigi Spezzaferro, “Una Testimonianza per gli Inizi del Caravaggismo,” Storia dell’Arte 23 (1975): 55n9, 58.
Richard E. Spear, Caravaggion and His Followers, rev. ed. (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), 44-45 no. 3 (ill.)
R. Ward Bissell, Orazio Gentileschi and the Poetic Tradition in Caravaggesque Painting (University Park, PA and London, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1981), 16, 141, fig. 219.
Claudio Strinati, “Riforma della Pittura e Riforma Religiosa,” in L’immagine di San Francesco nella Controriforma, exh. cat. (Rome: Quasar, 1982), 53.
Caravaggio e il suo Tempo, exh. cat. (Naples: Electa 1985), 90.
Howard Higgard, Caravaggio (New York: Harper and Row, 1985), 58–60.
Luisa Vertova, Caravaggism in Europe, 2nd rev. ed., vol. 1 (Torino: Umberto Allemandi, 1989), 52 no. 85 (ill.).
Renate Möller, Der römische Maler Giovanni Baglione: Leben und Werk unter besonderer Berücksichtigung seiner stilgeschichtlichen Stellung zwischen Manierismus und Barock (Munich: Tuduv, 1991), 50–53, 99–100, no. 13.
Wolfgang Heinrich Savelsberg, Die Darstellung des hl. (Heiligen) Franziskus Von Assisi in der Flämischen Malerei Und Graphik Des Späten 16. und des 17. Jahrhunderts (Rome : Instituto Storico dei Cappuccini, 1992), 64, 258-60 no. 103.
Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon : die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker vol. 6: Avogaro-Barbieri (Munich and Leipzig: K.G. Saur, 1992), 278.
Maria Giulia Aurigemma, “Dal cavalier Baglione, » Storia dell’arte 80 (1994): 32,33 fig. 5, 45n92-97.
Roberto Cannatà and Maria Lucrezia Vicini, La Galleria di Palazzo Spada: Genesi e storia di una collezione (Rome: Edizioni d’Europa, 1994), n.p.
Dennis P. Weller, Sinners and Saints: Darkness and Light: Caravaggio and His Dutch and Flemish Followers (Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1998), 23 fig. 9, 24n 32n33.
Caravaggio e I soui Percorsi Caravaggeschi in Palazzo Barberini (Naples: Electa, 1999), 34, 145.
Beverly Louise Brown, ed., The Genius of Rome: 1592-1623, exh. cat. (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2001), 270, fig. 98.
Keith Christiansen and Judith W. Mann, Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, exh. cat. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001), 53-54 fig. 39.
Stefania Macioce, Giovanni Baglione, 1566-1644: pittore e biografo di artisti (Rome: Lithos, 2002), XX–XXI.
Maryvelma Smith O’Neil, Giovanni Baglione: Artistic Reputation in Baroque Rome (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
Larry J. Feinberg, “The Ecstasy of Saint Francis,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 30, no. 1 (2004): 56-57 (color ill.).
Francesca Cappelletti, “’Beauty from Nature’ and Devotion: The Caravaggisti’s New Images of the Saints” in Caravaggio and His Followers in Rome, exh. cat. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2012), 221-22 (ill.).
Letizia Treves, et al., Beyond Caravaggio, exh. cat. (London: National Gallery Company; Dublin: National Gallery of Ireland; Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 2016), 72-77, cat. 11, 178-179, 205.

Milan, Palazzo Reale, Mostra del Caravaggio e dei Caravaggeschi, April – June 1951, cat. 51.
Utrecht, Centraal Museum, Carravaggio en de Nederlanden, June 15–August 3, 1952, cat. 6; Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, August 10–September 28 1952, cat. 6.
Cleveland Museum of Art, Caravaggio and his Followers, October 27, 1971–January 2, 1972, cat. 3.
Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada, Caravaggio and His Followers in Rome, June 17—September 11, 2011, cat. 29; Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum, October 9, 2011—January 8, 2012.
London, National Gallery, Beyond Caravaggio, October 12, 2016-January 15, 2017, cat. 11.
Art Institute of Chicago, Among Friends and Rivals: Caravaggio in Rome, Sep. 8-Dec. 31, 2023, no cat.

Possibly Cardinal Bernardino Spada, Rome, to 1636 [see February 1636 inventory cited by Aurigemma, 1994]. Borghese Collection, Rome by 1650, probably until 1804 [Benedetti 1949, p. 4]. Cardinal Joseph Fesch, Rome [Benedetti, 1949, p. 4]; donated by him to the city of Lyon, France for a charity auction in 1836 [Benedetti 1949, p. 4]. M. Breval of Fontaine St. Martin, near Lyon [note in 1909 Louvre photo archive]. Henry Charles Ponsonby Moore, 10th Earl of Drogheda, London and Dublin, to 1947 [purchase document from Agnew, March 1959]; sold by Earl of Drogheda through Agnew’s, London, to Michele de Benedetti, Rome, in June 1947; consigned by Benedetti to Agnew’s, 1959 [purchase document from Agnew, March 1959]; sold by Agnew’s to Mrs. Suzette Morton Zurcher (died 1996) (later Davidson), Santa Barbara and Chicago, March 1959; bequeathed to the Art Institute with her husband Eugene Davidson (died 2002) having life interest, 2002.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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