ESCUELA NAPOLITANA, H. 1670San Pablo ermitaño Lot n° 815

Oil on canvas. 116 x 94 cm. With antique frame in carved and gilded wood. St. Paul of Thebes, known as Paul the Hermit (228-341), is considered the first spiritual hermit saint, contemplative and renouncing worldly life. His origin is Egyptian. According to St. Jerome's account in Vita Sancti Pauli primi eremitae, St. Paul, coming from a noble family, received an excellent education in Egyptian and Greek cultures. He abandoned everything to retire to the desert after being denounced by some of his relatives, who wanted to seize his patrimony during the persecution of the Roman emperor Decius. In his retreat in the desert, where he spent the rest of his life, St. Paul fed himself with bread brought to him by a raven. At the end of his life, he was visited by Anthony Abbot, to whom he asked to be buried in the tunic that the latter had received from Bishop Athanasius, in a grave dug by two lions. In this work, on a landscape background, St. Paul the hermit is shown seated, half-naked with a cloth around his waist and wrapped in a wicker bed. In his right hand he holds a rosary of wooden beads and behind him can be seen an open book, and the cross on the upper left. To his right, a crow offers him a piece of bread while the saint, in a contemplative attitude, directs his gaze to heaven. There are several versions of this same subject painted by Mattia Preti, including those in the Cleveland Museum of Art, the National Museum of Fine Arts in Valletta and the Museum of Fine Arts of Catalonia.