Sculpture, San Francesco d'Assisi con Croce e Uccelli - Area Alpina, XVI Secolo - 76 cm - Wood

I’m putting up for auction another truly special piece from my altar group of the Alpine area: a rare and expressive polychrome solid-wood sculpture depicting Saint Francis of Assisi, dating from the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century (about 1580–1630).
What makes this figure so poetic and sought after by collectors is its iconography linked to the sermon to the birds: the Saint stands in his traditional brown brown-toned Franciscan habit with hood and tonsure, holds a cross in his right hand, and gazes with sweet gentleness at two small birds carved in wood, perched one on the right shoulder and the other directly on the palm of the left hand.
The entire work is carved from a single trunk of hard wood. Looking at the photo of the base one immediately notices the deep, concave, vigorous marks of the broad chisel and the era’s hand axe, with no trace of modern mechanical saws. The intense, gathered face, together with the heavy, vertical folds of the habit, convey the spiritual power of Alpine sacred sculpture from Early Modern times. The surface still preserves its old layered polychromy on a gesso preparation, with natural signs of aging, a small loss on the tonsure, and an authentic patina never altered by recent retouching. A sculpture of great character, rich in history and spirituality.