San Francesco di Paola

Saint Francis of Paola the hermit, venerated in the south of Italy, is considered the patron saint of Sicily, iconographically represented with a habit, a stick and the inscription Caritas, adopted as the coat of arms of his order. The choice of the name Francis, is due to the devotion of his parents to the Saint of Assisi, to whom they asked a first grace to have a child, given their no longer young  age and a second one to heal, the same one, from a serious illness to the eyes. For this last one they made a vow that in case of healing, the young Francis would have worn the habit of the Franciscan order for a whole year.  Here began his devotion to the order. The painting depicts “Saint Francis of Paola”, made with oil paints and gold leaf, it belongs to a series of my creation called “Vintage”, characterized by the use of frames and antique glass sheets and a process of “antiquing” of the painted surface, the result of a personal experimentation developed and refined over the years, which simulates corrosion and the fall of color giving the painting a realistic effect of “old”.  The glass painting is an ancient painting technique almost disappeared, whose peculiarity is to realize the subjects according to a “specular” perspective, so that at the end of the work the glass sheet must be “turned”, to show the correct side that will be clearly visible thanks to the transparency of the glass. In order to obtain the correct pictorial result, the artist will have to proceed by superimposing various layers of paint, inserting, first, the decorative details of the subject, and then finish with the larger parts.