Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata (van Eyck)

The paintings may have belonged to the Adornes family of Bruges. They may also have commissioned the two St Francis paintings as commemoration of the pilgrimage, in the fashion of the Eyckian The Three Marys at the Tomb. An alternative theory is that they had the small painting prepared as a portable devotional work to bring on pilgrimage.

About Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata (van Eyck) in brief

St Francis of Assisi Receiving the Stigmata is the name given to two unsigned paintings completed around 1428–1432 that art historians usually attribute to the Flemish artist Jan van Eyck. The panels are nearly identical, apart from a considerable difference in size. 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. They may also have commissioned the two St Francis paintings as commemoration of the pilgrimage, in the fashion of the Eyckian The Three Marys at the Tomb – attributed to Jan’s brother Hubert. An alternative theory is that they had the small painting prepared as a portable devotional work to bring on pilgrimage. In the early 1470s Sandro Botticelli, Verrochio, Filippino Lippi and Giovanni Bellini each produced variations of St Francis receiving the stigmata. The Turin painting was acquired in 1866 from the mayor of a nearby town and was owned by a living professor of Alessandria. In 1917, it was bought by a collector in Philadelphia and bequeathed to his art collection to the City City Museum of Philadelphia.

It was later sold to a dealer in Philadelphia for £700 in 1917, and later the collector John G. Johnson bought it for £7,000. The painting is now in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, where it is on display alongside other works of art by Van Eyck, including The Temptation of the Sun and The Sorrows of the Moon. It is also on display at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and is on loan to the Library of Congress, which has a special collection of vanEyck’s works on loan from the University of Maryland, College of Arts and Sciences. It can be ordered online at www.museumoffinearts.org.uk/st Francis-receiving-the-stigmata-paintings-by-jan-van-eyck-and-other-artists-on- loan-to-the museum-of-museum of the city-city of- Philadelphia. For more information on the exhibition, visit the museum’s website or go to: http://www.museums-art.org/st-fansi/fansis-recovery-st-francis.html. For information on how to buy the painting in the US, visit: www. museumofart.com/s/stfancis- Receiving-The-Stigmata/purchase-purchase.php. For details on the Italian version of the painting, go to www.s/m/sf/fantsi/receipts/recovers/StFrancis-Receiving the-St Francis.

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