Vision of St Francis

The Virgin is shown hovering above the kneeling saint while holding the Child Jesus in her arms; she is preparing to give something to the Child Jesus, but it is downward, thus making the whole composition an act of exchange, rather than static devotion. The painting's loose, confident brushwork, a lack of the earlier seventeenth century's preoccupation with linear depiction of religious subjects, combined with the richness of color and its almost vibrating effects, is what makes it a mature painting by one of the most significant painters of the Roman Baroque. The theme itself (the Virgin offering her child directly to Saint Francis) was one that was very common and was painted in many different ways throughout the seventeenth century, and it is not novelty of theme that distinguishes this particular treatment, but the life of the paint itself: the figures seem to be caught mid-movement, not posed, and the compositional energy flows from Saint Francis's outstretched reception of the apparition to the descent of the Virgin to meet the saint. Notably, the Arezzo canvas is a documented copy, slightly smaller in size than the one discussed here, of the original altarpiece which Cortona painted for the Montauto Chapel in the church of the Annunziata in Arezzo between 1640 and 1641.