Christ Appearing in a Dream to Saint Martin

Artist Francesco Solimena Italian, 1657–1747

Datecirca 1733

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensions39 1/2 x 49 1/2 in. (100.3 x 125.7 cm)
Frame: 47 1/2 x 57 in. (120.7 x 144.8 cm)

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineGift of Mrs. Florence G. Montgomery

Object numberG.59.2.1

On View

Not on view

Label Text
The sleeping man at right is Martin, a Roman soldier in fourth-century France. According to legend, on a cold winter day, he came upon a beggar clothed only in a few rags. Martin took off his cloak, cut it in two with his sword, and gave one piece to the beggar. That night, wearing the beggar’s half of the cloak, Christ appeared to Martin in a dream and acknowledged his act of charity with these words: “What you have done for that poor man, you have done for me.”

The flickering brushwork and dramatic contrasts of light and dark that give this work its visionary quality are hallmarks of Solimena’s style. The work is probably a ricordo (replica) painted by Solimena of his fresco in the monastery of St. Martin in Naples.Provenance[Possibly (the Neapolitan painter) Raffaele Carelli (1795-1864), who owned a bozzetto for the Certosa Dream of St. Martin that was cited in 1855-57 as in the palazzo Calabrito, Naples, "presso il signor Tharp, inglese.";] with Piero Tozzi Gallery, New York; February 1959; given by Mrs. Florence G. Montgomery, Greenwich, Connecticut, to NCMA, 1959Published ReferencesEdgar Peters Bowron, ed., Introduction to the Collections (Chapel Hill: published for the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, by The University of North Carolina Press, 1983), illus. (b-w) 212.

"Conservation," North Carolina Museum of Art Preview (Winter 1991-92), mentioned and illus. (b-w) 54.

Introduction to the Collections, rev. ed. (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1992), illus. (b-w) 196.

Maria Alberto Pavone, Pittori Napoletani del Primo Settecento (Naples: Liguori Editore, 1997), 154, detail illus. (color) pl. 20.

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