Francesco Fracanzano (1612 - 1656), Face Of Saint

Francesco Fracanzano (Monopoli, 9 July 1612 - Naples, 1656)

Face of Saint

Oil on canvas, 74 x 53 cm

With frame 82 x 72 cm

The present Head of Saint enclosed in a spectacular frame can be attributed to the painter Francesco Fracanzano (Monopoli, 9 July 1612 - Naples, 1656). Born in Puglia, he arrived in Naples as early as 1622, where, like his brother Cesare, he worked from about 1630 initially in the workshop of the painter Jusepe de Ribera; De Dominici mentions the activity of Fracanzano in the workshop of Ribera stating that: "the master very much used it in the many requests of his paintings... half figures of saints and philosophers". In 1632 he married the sister of Salvator Rosa and became her teacher.

Fracanzano participated in the revolt of Masaniello of the poor population of Naples in 1647 against the increase in Spanish taxes, after whose repression was avoided only by influential friends. He died in 1656 during a plague epidemic

Among his first commissions there are the Scenes of the life of San Gregorio Armeno in the chapel of S. Gregorio Armeno in the homonymous Neapolitan church. To the initial production of Fracanzano should be ascribed, for homogeneity of compositional characters and for a substantial adherence to the "tremendous mixture" of currant matrix, the Man who reads the Provincial Museum of Lecce, Jesus among the doctors of the picture of Jesus New, The return of the prodigal son, Lot and the daughters of the cathedral of Monopoli, some of the Apostles, kept at the convent of St. Pasquale in Taranto, and the so-called Portrait of Ludovico Carducci Artemisio. Among his most famous paintings there are the Baccanale of the Fogg Art Museum of Cambridge and the Triumph of Bacchus of the National Museum of Capodimonte, in which the body of the material underlined by the vigorous luministic effect is accompanied by a brighter color, sustained by the characteristic redness of the faces. The representation of half figures of saints and philosophers, investigated with raw realism, according to a fashion born in the workshop of Ribera in Naples and then established in the province thanks to his disciples is resumed, as in the following case, Francesco Fracanzano who is among the most convinced followers of the valencian. Working with Ribera he received the same predilection for the body of the pictorial material and often proposed the subjects most requested by the client: studies of heads and half figures of philosophers and prophets on a dark background. They are often powerful characters dressed in rudimentary clothes, with irrelevant iconographic attributes that only with the help of imagination sometimes allow their identification.

A reference can be seen with the canvases of the Museum of Capodimonte depicting San Pietro and San Gerolamo but also the Man with cartouche of the Fondazione de Vito and San Pietro di Caserta.