Attributed to the Obrador of FRANCISCO ZURBARAN (Fuente de Cantos, Badajoz, 1598 - Madrid, 1664)."

Attributed to the Obrador of FRANCISCO ZURBARAN (Fuente de Cantos, Badajoz, 1598 - Madrid, 1664).
"Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata", ca 1630-1650
Oil on canvas. Relined.
Attached is a report on the work issued by Ismael Gutierrez Pastor.
It has slight repainting.
Measurements: 145 x 105 cm; 156 x 116 cm (frame).
In this work of devotional character the episode is represented in which St. Francis, being retired in the mountain, had a vision in which Christ appeared to him, from whose wounds rays emerged that caused the saint stigmata in his hands and feet. The scene is set in the foreground, with the saint three-quarter length, dressed in the Franciscan sackcloth, with the Holy Scriptures in front of him, and a skull on a rock, the objects of his meditation.
Saint Francis (Assisi, Italy, 1182 - 1226) was the son of a wealthy Italian merchant. Baptised John, he soon became known as "Francesco" (the little Frenchman), because his mother came from that country. His youth was joyful and carefree until the age of twenty-five, when he changed completely and began to dedicate himself to the service of God, practising the Gospel ideal: purity, detachment and joy in peace. Francesco renounced the great inheritance he had received from his parents and decided to live poorly, setting an example of an authentic Christian. He soon had several young disciples, called by the saint "order of the Friars Minor". In 1210, Pope Innocent III granted them the foundation of the new order and encouraged them in their evangelical work. He was a legendary figure during his lifetime, considered a living relic. Likewise, his exquisite poetry and his familiarity with nature add the most human accent known in a saint, as can be seen in his "Canticle to the Sun".Francisco de Zurbarán trained in Seville, where he was a disciple of Pedro Díaz de Villanueva between 1614 and 1617. During this period he had the opportunity to meet Pachecho and Herrera, and to establish contacts with his contemporaries Velázquez and Cano, apprentices like himself in Seville at the time. After several years of diverse apprenticeship, Zurbarán returned to Badajoz without undergoing the Sevillian guild examination. He settled in Llerena between 1617 and 1628, where he received commissions both from the municipality and from various convents and churches in Extremadura. In 1629, at the unusual suggestion of the Municipal Council, Zurbarán settled permanently in Seville, marking the beginning of the most prestigious decade of his career. He received commissions from all the religious orders present in Andalusia and Extremadura, and was finally invited to the court in 1934, perhaps at Velázquez's suggestion, to take part in the decoration of the great hall of the Buen Retiro. On returning to Seville, Zurbarán continued to work for the court and for various monastic orders. In 1958, probably prompted by the difficulties of the Sevillian market, he moved to Madrid. During this last period of his output he produced small-format private devotional canvases of refined execution. Zurbarán was a painter of simple realism, excluding grandiloquence and theatricality from his work, and we can even find a certain clumsiness when solving the technical problems of geometric perspective, despite the perfection of his drawing of anatomies, faces and objects. Nor is he interested in foreshortening or in suggesting illusionistic Italian-style spaces. His severe, rigorously ordered compositions reach an exceptional level of pious emotion. With regard to tenebrism, the painter practised it above all in his early Sevillian period, both in his well-known monastic works and in pieces for private devotion. No one surpasses him in his way of expressing the tenderness and candour of children, young virgins and adolescent saints. His exceptional technique also enabled him to depict the tactile values of canvases and objects, making him an exceptional still life painter. His sobriety, his expressive power