October 4 is the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi. In commemoration I add this post on Giovanni Bellini's famous painting of St. Francis in the Desert, one of the prized possessions of New York's Frick Museum.
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| Giovanni Bellini: St. Francis in the Desert (click on images to enlarge) |
For over 50 years the Frick Museum
in New York City has been my favorite museum. It is a small, easily navigated
site quite unlike the Metropolitan only a few blocks away on 5th
Avenue. It’s magnificent collection of paintings, acquired for the most part
during the late 19th and early 20th centuries by steel
baron, Henry Clay Frick, spans the gamut of Western art from late Medieval to
the Impressionists.
You cannot visit the Frick and fail
to notice that patrons invariably stop in the great central living room to
stare and wonder at Giovanni Bellini’s famous, “St. Francis in the Desert.” On
one occasion a museum employee confirmed my guess that this painting, despite
the presence of works by the likes of Titian, Rembrandt, and Renoir, is the
most popular in the whole collection.
Born in 1430 Giovanni Bellini is
arguably the first great master of the Venetian Renaissance. The Venetian
version of the Renaissance has long taken a back seat to the Florentine but in
the last few decades it has come into its own and today most scholars would
agree that Bellini and his younger successors, Giorgione, and Titian, can hold
their own as painters with Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael.
Indeed, the Bellini family studio
is now seen as one of the great sources of the Renaissance. Giovanni and his
brother, Gentile, who at one point went to Constantinople to paint the Sultan,
inherited the studio from their father, Jacopo. Andrea Mantegna, a great
painter in his own right, married one of the Bellini sisters and exerted a powerful
influence on the studio. Scholars also suspect that both Giorgione and Titian
were apprentices at the Bellini studio before they broke out on their own.
Although he painted the St. Francis
around 1480, Bellini continued to paint well into the next century. Until his
death he was sought after and courted by public, religious, and private
patrons. He is best known as a painter of Madonnas and groups of figures ranged
around the Madonna and Child often called “sacra conversazione.” Nevertheless,
the St. Francis is a unique work in the history of Renaissance art.
What is going on in the painting?
St. Francis stands in the foreground a little off center wearing his familiar
robe. Behind him is a kind of
wooden structure that seems to lead into a cave. The mid-ground is largely made
up of a barren landscape whose primary occupant is a small horse or ass.
Prominent in the upper left is an oddly shaped tree that appears to be leaning
toward St. Francis. In the distant background we see a majestic towered city.
In one interpretation of the
painting Francis is receiving the stigmata, the actual wounds of Christ on his
own body. His hands are
outstretched but it is hard to see if there are wounds. Moreover, traditional
elements usually employed in depictions of the stigmata episode are absent. His
companion, Brother Leo, is not shown and neither are Christ or an angel.
I prefer the interpretation of John
V. Fleming in From Bonaventure to
Bellini, an Essay in Franciscan
Exegesis. In this often overlooked but extraordinary 1982 monograph Fleming
argued that Marcantonio Michiel’s original description of the painting, when he
saw it in the home of Venetian patrician, Taddeo Contarini, “St. Francis in the
Desert,” was indeed correct. Fleming saw the subject of the painting
and every detail in it grounded in Franciscan spirituality.
The landscape in the painting is
not La Verna, the site of the stigmata episode, but the desert of the Old
Testament or Hebrew scriptures. In particular, it is the Egyptian desert. The
prominent animal in mid-ground is the Onager or wild ass of the desert while
the heron standing before it is a bird of the Nile delta.
Franciscans often associated their
founder with Moses and Elijah and their life in the desert. In the background
beneath the city there is a shepherd tending his flock just as Moses did before
his encounter with the Lord. Indeed, the leaning tree so prominent in the upper
left is the famous burning bush in which the Lord appeared to Moses. It is a
laurel which at the time was believed to be impervious to fire. We also notice
that Francis has removed his sandals and stands barefoot in the same manner as
Moses.
The wooden structure behind Francis
is a Sukkoth, variously translated as tent, hut, booth, or tabernacle, a kind
of portable structure used by the Israelites in their wanderings in the desert.
The Sukkoth also recalls the scene of the Transfiguration when Christ was
revealed in His glory accompanied by Moses and Elijah to the three apostles,
Peter, James, and John. Dumfounded, Peter offered to build three booths or
Sukkoth for the Lord and his guests.
If we look closely, we will see
beneath the right hand of Francis a rabbit in a hole in the rock, and beneath
his left hand a jug. The rabbit was a symbolic reference to Moses who hid his
face from the Lord and the jug is a reference to Elijah. Indeed, the abundant
vegetation sprouting around Francis is a garden or carmel, another reference to
Elijah who was supposed to have been the founder of the Carmelite order.
Francis stands between Moses and Elijah in the same way as Christ stood between
them at the Transfiguration. In Franciscan spirituality and imagery, Francis
was the new Christ.
Just as Moses came to lead his
people out of the slavery of Egypt, so too did Francis come to lead his
followers out of the slavery of sin. The city in the background then is a place
of danger and peril, both physical and spiritual. The desert is symbolic of the
life of poverty and humility preached by the famous founder of the Franciscan
order.
Most of the paintings acquired by
Henry Clay Frick had a special meaning for him. A committed Mason, Frick
admired Francis because of his love of Nature. Others who have viewed the
painting since Frick added it to his collection perhaps have had their own
reasons for admiring it. Even if we know nothing of Franciscan spirituality,
Bellini’s painting is still an image of a human being standing open and
receptive to the divine light and transforming the world because of it.
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