St. Francis Supported by an Angel

In September 1603 the painter Giovanni Baglione took Caravaggio and several of his friends to court in Rome over insulting verses that had been passed round about him. Orazio Gentileschi was one of the accused, and in his evidence he mentioned that he had lent Caravaggio a Capuchin friar's habit and a pair of wings.

The Museum of Fine Arts believes those same studio props appear in this canvas, the brown habit on the saint and the wings on the angel who holds him, and later in pictures by Caravaggio. Gentileschi was painting from a model posed in the studio, as Caravaggio did.

Caravaggio had painted the subject a few years earlier, in a picture now in Hartford, Connecticut, with Francis collapsing into an angel's arms. Gentileschi keeps the ecstasy and leaves out the stigmata, the wounds of Christ that Francis was said to have received while at prayer. The Church of the time wanted saints the faithful could feel for, and a fainting Francis was a favourite subject.

In the 1960s the canvas was with the Roman dealer Alberto di Castro, and the museum bought it in 2010.