With Galerie Wolfgang Böhler, Bensheim, Germany;

Anonymous sale, ෴London, Sotheby's, 12 July 2001, lot 73;

Where acquired.

A. Morassi, A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings of G.B. Tiepolo, London 1962, p. 31, cat. no. 172,🥂 reproduced fig. 172 (as present whereabouts un🐻known).

Morassi dates this depiction of St. Francis of Paola to the first half of the 1730s, and connects it to two other half-length saints from the same period: St. Vincent Ferrer (formerly Venier collection, Milan) and St. Cajetan (Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, Rio de Janeiro). In the early 1730s, Tiepolo had established his reput😼ation in Venice with the rec🧸ent completion of the large Roman history canvases for the Ca'Dolfin, and he garnered many religious and secular commissions as a result.

St. Francis of Paola (1416 -1507) led a contemplative, austere life, and founded the order of the Hermits of St. Francis of Assisi in 1474. He was canonized in 1519. Tiepolo portrayed him in his characteristic brown habit with a short, round scapular, holding a staff and book and clutching a rosary. St. Francis's downward gaze and worn, aging face and hands indicate his life of self-deprivation. His motto, CHARITAS, a♒ppears in an aureole at upper right, signifying his service to the poorꩵ.