«Chi si aspetterebbe un Pordenone a Gallipoli?»

Abstract

The Saint Francis of Assisi with three angels crowning him in a day landscape and two donors in prayer has been known at least since the end of the seventeenth century in the church of San Francesco in Gallipoli, in the province of Lecce (currently the Saint Francis is relocated in the Diocesan Museum - section of Gallipoli “Mons. Vittorio Fusco”). In 1951 Giovanni Urbani brought it to the national attention of art history studies as the work of one of Titian’s greatest contemporaries, Giovanni Antonio de’ Sacchis known as Pordenone, based on an intuition of Sabino Jusco. Yet the provenance of the higher quality sixteenth-century work in a church in the Salento area remains mysterious. The direct inspection of the Saint Francis, including recent exhibitions and restoration interventions, made it possible to re-examine in depth or for the first time the issues concerning the genesis, chronology, paths and commissioning of the painting.