Oil on canvas The Sermon of St. Francis Xavier. 17th century

Subject: The sermon of Saint Francis Xavier.

Author: Francesco Curradi (Florence 1570-1661)

Technique and dimensions: oil on canvas, cm. 136 x 96.

The valuable painting we present represents one of the highest moments of the mission of the Spanish Jesuit, originally from Navarre, Francis Xavier, one of the first companions of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, whom he met at the University of Paris: sent to evangelize the Indies in 1541 by the king of Portugal John III, he fell ill with malaria during a journey from Malacca to the island of Sangian, and died in 1552. His body was taken to Goa, where it currently rests in the church of Bom Jesus, included in the UNESCO World Heritage List.

The success of his mission was such that he was canonized by Pope Gregory XV in 1622. The silver antependium that closes the tomb of the saint bears in bas-relief the very representation of the scene also immortalized in our canvas as well as in a good part of the hagiographic Counter-Reformation pictorial production dedicated to the saint.

A more direct connection between the Goa bas-relief and our canvas is the extraordinary iconographic proximity, which can probably be explained by the Florentine context in which our painting was also placed: we know in fact that the mausoleum intended to house the saint's silver urn in Goa is a work that involved the Florentine semi-precious stone factory between 1689 and 1695, created by the grand-ducal factory at the behest of the Grand Duke of Tuscany Cosimo III as a sign of gratitude towards the Jesuits of Goa who had donated a relic of the saint (a cushion) to him.

That being said, and considering the iconographic proximity mentioned above between the bas-relief and the painting we are examining, the hypothesis of a Florentine origin for our canvas does not seem at all far-fetched.

Upon closer inspection, it can be traced back to the work of Francesco Curradi (1570-1661), author of a subject of the same name, of more considerable dimensions (360 x 250), preserved in the Florentine church of San Giovannino dei Padri Scolopi (fourth chapel, right side), which under Cosimo III, in 1723, was enriched and embellished with marbles donated by the Grand Duke himself.

A further element in favour of attributing the painting to Curradi, the most important exponent of Florentine devotional painting in the first half of the 17th century, a precursor of Dolci, is an intrinsic characteristic of the work that we are analysing, noted and appreciated by Lanzi (L. Lanzi, Storia pittorica della Italia (1809), edited by M. Capucci I, Florence 1968, p. 154) in other sacred subjects by the Florentine painter: the small figures.

Firmly convinced that the best works by Curradi (author of numerous altarpieces intended for Florentine churches as well as those of other Tuscan cities such as Pisa, Siena, Livorno, Volterra, Pescia) were precisely those with small figures, Lanzi cited in this regard the Martyrdom of Saint Thecla (now in the Uffizi) and the series of lunettes with Stories of the Magdalene, formerly in the Chapel of the Villa di Poggio Imperiale and now in Palazzo Pitti (the preparatory drawings are preserved in the Gabinetto delle stampe in Rome). A further example of this aspect of Curradi's production favoured by Lanzi must have been the painting depicting the Five Saints canonised by Urban VIII, cited in the eighteenth century in the Tartini collection in Florence (see Series, 1774, p. 138, no. 1).

In our canvas, like other hagiographic compositions by Curradi, the stylistic proximity to the devout purism of his contemporary Matteo Rosselli clearly emerges (the collaboration in various works with the latter as well as with Jacopo da Empoli and with Passignano for the same clients is certain): the Mannerist education received in Naldini's workshop is transformed and revisited in a "reformed" style based on the principles of "design" and "decorum", typical of Florentine painting of the early seventeenth century, to which Curradi remained substantially faithful, so much so that he became a painter sought after by Florentine collectors, as his frequent citations in nineteenth-century inventories testify.

The attention to orientalist themes is appreciable, visible in the depiction of black characters wearing feathered outfits and turbans.