Guglielmo Caccia Moncalvo (1568 -1625) - Saint Francis of Assisi comforted by an angel

Guglielmo Caccia said the Moncalvo
(Montabone, 1568 - Moncalvo, 1625)

Saint Francis of Assisi comforted by an angel
Oil on canvas, cm 96 x 73 - (with frame 106 x 83 cm)

With an intense gaze, from which a severe spiritual travail shines, Saint Francis welcomes the apparition of the musician angel who has come to comfort his solitary meditation. Nothing distracts attention from the silent conversation between the celestial figure and the saint of Assisi, except the humble crock bowl that can be seen on the table that acts as a support to the left hand of the saint.

The expressive concentration that pervades the representation correspond to a very reduced color gamut and an essential pictorial conduction, built with a diaphanous material, almost transparent, which lets emerge from the bottom traces of the basic design and warm tones of the preparation, as if to dematerialize the image.

Taking into account these executive characters and the typologies of the two protagonists of our painting, it appears immediately to be traced back to the production of Guglielmo Caccia known as Moncalvo (1568-1625)in which it is given to find numerous points of comparison with Saint Francis here under examination. The figure of the saint of Assisi recurs frequently in the work of the Piedmontese painter already starting from the Madonna and Child and Saints of Cioccaro di Penango (Asti) of 1602, an altarpiece of the first maturity of the artist in which we find a Saint Francis profile very close to that observable in our canvas (cf. Guglielmo Caccia known as il Moncalvo. Paintings and drawings, catalogue of the exhibition curated by G. Romano, C. E. Spantigati, Turin, 1997, pp. 50-51, n. 2). The expressive accentuation and the chromatic rarefaction that characterize our Saint Francis lead however to place it in the last stretch of the artist’s career, that is after his important stay in Lombardy, where it is long attested during the second decade of the seventeenth century.
The path of Moncalvo, after a first period of activity in the native Monferrato and in the neighboring areas sees the painter summoned to the court of Savoy in Turin, where between 1605 and 1608 he is called to work alongside Federico Zuccari in the fresco decoration of the Great Gallery commissioned by Duke Carlo Emanuele I as a spectacular link between the ancient castle (now Palazzo Madama) and the new ducal palace. The participation in this great enterprise - unfortunately lost - guarantees Moncalvo a leading position in the pictorial panorama not only of Piedmont but also of Lombardy, where Moncalvo receives numerous prestigious commissions, like those in the Milanese churches of Sant'Alessandro, Sant'Antonio Abate, Sant'Angelo and San Vittore, in the Duomo of Monza, in Como (altarpiece of the high altar of Sant'Orsola: cfr. Pittura a Como e nel Canton Ticino dal Mille al Settecento, edited by M. Gregori, Milano, 1994, p. 174, n. 94) and in several churches in Pavia (for a profile of the painter: G. Romano, Caccia Gugliemo detto il Moncalvo, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Roma, vol. 15, 1972, pp. 758-762; Guglielmo Caccia detto il Moncalvo. Paintings and drawings, exhibition catalogue curated by G. Romano, C. E. Spantigati, Torino, 1997). The contact with the Lombard figurative climate, dominated by the pathetic face of the artists dear to Giovanni Testori - Cerano, Morazzone and Giulio Cesare Procaccini - determines a certain expressive intensification of the style of Moncalvo, as the San Francesco presented here clearly states, to be read keeping in mind the dramatic depictions produced by the protagonists of the Milanese painting of the early seventeenth century.
Among the late works of Moncalvo a timely comparison for the figure of San Francesco comforted by the angel can be found in the altarpiece of 1623 depicting the Madonna and Child with Saints in the church of San Siro in Lugano-Carabbia (cf. Pittura a Como e nel Canton Ticino dal Mille al Settecento, curated by M. Gregori, Milano, 1994, p. 201, n. 121), in which appears a Saint Francis entirely similar to the one presented here.