Like the theme of the agonizing saint comforted by the Angel, the theme of St. Francis immersed in penitential meditation or elated in ecstasy with the stigmata did not derive from the major Franciscan cycles of the Duecento, from Berlinghieri (1235) to Giotto (1296-c.1300 and c.1320). Rather, it first belonged in the so-called secondary iconography of St. Francis, created by the post-Tridentine propaganda. The latter not only parted with the traditional narrative approach developed from coeval biographical sources of Tommaso Celano and St. Buenaventura (1263), but above all radically transformed the characteristics of the young and smiley medieval Poverello, endowing him with an aged and emaciated countenance – a mysticism tending to ecstasy – and an obsession with the skull, which was emblematic of the Counter-Reformist memento mori (Askew 1969, p. 280). Whether out of personal choice or the predilection of his clientele, El Greco returned numerous times to this specific denotation of St. Francis’s imagery, of which more than 70 versions were compiled (Frati 1969). The prototype of the Ecstasy of St. Francis conserved at Masp is probably the painting that was once at the chapel of San José, in Toledo. A number of replicas or versions with slight variations are conserved in Toledo museums – San Vicente and Casa y Museo de El Greco – and other collections, such as for example the Conde de Guendulain y del Vado Collection, in Toledo (signed copy mentioned in Frati, 1969, p. 75b); Goudstikker Collection, in Amsterdam; a private collection in New Orleans, and another at the Musée de Pau, in France. According to Frati, who is unaware of, or does not quote the version at Masp, the work at Pau should be regarded as the only autograph painting and the others “should be attributed to his disciples”. In Wethey’s opinion the version at Pau denotes a substantial participation of workshop attendants, which seems a fair, at the same time that he views the Conde de Guendulain y del Vado’s painting to be equally a product of the workshop, notwithstanding the signature.
Among the versions analyzed, the painting at Masp presents the more subtle brushwork, the most elaborate chiaroscuro, and the most convincing psychological representation of characters. From the standpoint of St. John of the Cross and St. Theresa of Avila, the light the saint contemplates is at the same time clarity and darkness, manifest sensation and obscurity, metaphor and presence of the sacred. Thus, more than simply furnishing illumination, the dark and gloomy beam of light turns into a fiery tongue that scorches the saint’s threadbare clothes and his countenance, transfigured by one of the most pungent fantasies of mystic experience, one of simultaneous ecstasy and martyrdom. According to Wethey (1962), the painting Ecstasy of St. Francis probably dates from the beginning of the 17th century.
— Unknown authorship, 1998
