Saint Francis and the Angel

In 1612 Orazio Griffi, a Roman priest and composer and a companion of Philip Neri, founded an oratory at San Girolamo della Carità, the house where Neri had lived and where his gatherings for prayer and music had begun. Orazio Gentileschi's canvas was probably painted for it, around 1612 or 1613. The museum sees the same purpose in the picture as in Griffi's music, meditation and spiritual instruction. Francis of Assisi has slumped back, unconscious, and an angel holds him up from behind. The museum reads his collapse as Francis living through the Passion of Christ in his own body, and the stigmata, the wounds of the crucifixion he was said to have received, are painted as real, physical marks. Down at the lower right a line of Latin still asks whoever stands here to pray for the Reverend Orazio Griffi, founder of this oratory and cell.