03 — ARTWORK
St Francis
- MEDIUM
- Oil on canvas, 99 x 75 cm
- TYPE
- Religious
PALETTE
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- FILE
- 721 × 950 px · JPEG
COMMENTARY
UNDERLINED TERMS ARE DEFINED IN THE GLOSSARY.
In some respects this work is associated with the point in Morazzone's career when he was working on the frescoes in the seventh chapela small separate place for worship, either part of a large church or a separate building. at the Sacro Monte, Varese. The painting may be viewed as a symbol of the tireless search for subtleties and depth of feeling that marked the Counter-ReformationTerm in ecclesiastical history referring to the reform of the entire Church which was widely believed to be necessary as early as the late Middle Ages. Reform programs, such as those passed by the Councils of Constance (1414-1418) and Basle (1431-1437 and 1448) or the 5th Lateran Council (1512-1517), did not achieve any lasting results. Not until the Protestant Reformation were the Pope and Roman Curia forced to take specific action against abuse of position, declining moral standards, the selling of indulgences and excesses in the worship of saints and relics. With the Laetere Jerusalem (1544) bull. Pope Paul III (1534-1549) was responsible for the convocation of the Council of Trent which, in three separate sessions between 15445 and 1563, started the process of inner reform in the Church. spirit of seventeenth-century Lombard painting. Having abandoned the profane elegance of the preceding period, it strains for a programmed mortification of the senses. The corrupt and corruptible body is the principal subject, and tears and sorrow prevail. Intended to show a forthright, almost brutal realismRealism (with an upper case "R"), also known as the Realist school, denotes a mid-nineteenth century art movement and style in which artists discarded the formulas of Neoclassicism and the theatrical drama of Romanticism to paint familiar scenes and events as they actually looked. Typically it involved some sort of sociopolitical or moral message, in the depiction of ugly or commonplace subjects. One of the main representatives and spokesmen was the painter Gustave Courbet. In the dispute about ways to represent reality, Realism rebelled against the idealistic and classicist tendencies in painting., this St Francis achieves the opposite effect. From its insistent "reality" there emerges an absolute abstraction, an entirely expressionistic unreality. Impetuous rhythms explode in and around the metallic brown habit, the claw-like hands, the drawn mask of the face, the agitated sky and the highlights on the figure. <P> <TABLE ALIGN=LEFT CELLPADDING=5 BORDER=1 WIDTH=320 BGCOLOR="#99CCCC"> <TR VALIGN=MIDDLE><TD><IMG SRC="/support/gif/listen.gif" BORDER=0 VALIGN=MIDDLE> Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 33 minutes):<BR><A HREF="#" onClick="w=window.open ('/music1/18_cent/haydn_m_mass.html', 'newWin', 'scrollbars=yes,status=no,dependent=yes,screenX=0,screenY=0,width=350,height=350');w.opener=this;w.focus();return true"><B>Michael Haydn: St Francis Mass</B></A> </TD></TR></TABLE>
CITE THIS RECORD — BIBTEX
@online{wga-r1eaad507765436,
author = {Krén, Emil and Marx, Daniel},
title = {St Francis by MORAZZONE},
organization = {{Web Gallery of Art}},
date = {2026-09-08},
url = {https://beta.wga.hu/artists/morazzone-rdf7534dd204ef1/st-francis-r1eaad507765436},
urldate = {2026-09-08},
langid = {english}
}ACCESSED 2026-09-08. REPLACE THE AUTHOR FIELD WITH THE COMMENTARY AUTHOR WHERE ONE IS NAMED.
OTHER WORKS BY MORAZZONE
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