Francesco Ghittoni (1855-1928), attribuito a - Estasi di San Francesco

AUTHOR (Attribuito a)

Francesco Ghittoni (Rizzolo di San Giorgio Piacentino, 25 March 1855 – Piacenza, 17 August 1928) was a prominent figure in Italian painting realism between the 19th and 20th centuries. His training almost entirely took place at the Istituto d'Arte Felice Gazzola in Piacenza, where he was a pupil of Lorenzo Toncini and Bernardino Pollinari, from whom he acquired a deep rigor for studying from life and a keen attention to human expressiveness. Deeply tied to his territory, in 1903 he assumed the role of conservator of the Civic Museum of Piacenza and, from 1911, became an academic and teacher at the same Gazzola Institute, shaping the subsequent generations of local artists.

His poetics, with a solid verist core enriched by macchia influence, expresses itself through a technique of humble and light brushstrokes, often immersed in modest and melancholic chromatic atmospheres. He distinguished himself in genre scenes focused on the life of workers and on family intimacy, yielding a painting with strong social and emotional breadth. His notable versatility led him to tackle official portraits of the aristocracy, sacred painting, and the silent snow-covered landscapes of his mature phase. Today, much of his work enriches the salons of prestigious private collections and the walls of important public institutions: the Gallery of Modern Art Ricci Oddi houses masterpieces such as The Visit to Grandmother and Landscape under the Snow, while other significant canvases belong to the Civic Museum of Piacenza, the Gazzola Institute, and various Emilian places of worship.

DESCRIPTION

"Esatsi di San Francesco", oil on panel, 32x19 cm, datable to the late 19th and early 20th century.

Probable modello for a large-format work. The painting depicts one of the most intimate and intense moments of the Franciscan tradition: the mystic rapture of the saint. In the center of the composition, St. Francis is shown kneeling on bare earth, his body arched backward and arms extended in a gesture of total and trusting surrender. He wears the poor habit of the order, cinct by the characteristic cord, while his face, turned upward and crowned by a thin halo, expresses an intense and participatory spiritual emotion. Behind him, almost to support him and to act as a conduit to the divine, one can glimpse an angel with broad-spread wings, whose figure seems almost fused with the light source that invades the scene. The saint and the celestial messenger are placed in a natural and austere setting, where the darkness of a cave or a rock on the left starkly contrasts with the luminous apparition and the opening toward the sky on the right.

From a compositional point of view, the work unfolds along a strong diagonal that opposes the dense gloom of the earth to the vibrant revelation of the sky, effectively dividing the painting between human and divine. Ghittoni adopts a rapid, loaded brushstroke, at times broken, of evident Macchiaioli suggestion, which avoids academic detail in favor of an immediate, almost sketch-like rendering that accentuates spontaneity and the truth of the moment. The chromatic play hinges on a strong chiaroscuro contrast: the palette moves from earthy, brown, and dull tones of the habit and foreground ground to suddenly bright blue, white, and golden tones of the background and the angel. This diffuse and immaterial light, which caresses the saint’s profile and brightens his face, has not only a plastic function but becomes the true emotional and spiritual engine of the painting.

This work sits coherently within Francesco Ghittoni’s versatile production, testifying to his ability to infuse a deep sense of truth even into religious subjects, treated with the same sincere emotional participation reserved for genre scenes and the lives of Piacenza workers. Trained at the Gazzola Institute in Piacenza, the artist here combines the rigor of his solid verist matrix—evident in the psychological study of the saint’s face and the natural pose—with the poetic quality of his “humble brushstrokes” and the modest, melancholic atmospheres that characterize his oeuvre. Stripping the sacred scene of any rhetoric or celebratory pomp, Ghittoni returns a intimate and deeply human dimension of faith, coherent with that strong social and emotional breadth that marks his entire artistic arc and has made him a leading figure of Italian painting realism at the turn of the two centuries.

CONDITION REPORT

Good overall condition. Work intact in every part with vivid and legible chroma and brushwork.

The photo of the painting inserted in an ambient setting was generated with artificial intelligence, and should be considered purely illustrative. Only the remaining photos, which faithfully show the object and its characteristics, both general and detail, are to be considered.

Tracked and insured shipping with proper packaging.