Saint Gregory at Prayer

Painting by Annibale Carracci

Saint Gregory at Prayer was an oil-on-panel painting by Annibale Carracci, showing the scene in Gregory the Great's life when an image of the Virgin Mary spoke to him while he prayed before it.

It was commissioned by cardinal Anton Maria Salviati for the personal chapel he had had built at San Gregorio al Celio in Rome. It can thus only date to between his becoming commendatory abbot of the Camaldolese monastery at San Gregorio al Celio in 1600 and his death in 1602. The saint is shown looking towards a wall of the chapel on which then hung an icon of the Virgin Mary, an overlapping of imaginary and real space which involves the viewer in the space and time of the event shown in the painting and made the painting one of the earliest examples of Baroque illusionism.^[1]

The work was seized by French occupying forces in 1798 – its gap at San Gregorio has been filled by an anonymous copy of the work. However, whilst it was en route to Paris, Vincenzo Camuccini somehow acquired it in Genoa and sent it to Britain. There it was sold to a Lord Radstock and later entered the collections at Bridgewater House in London. It and many other works, including others by Annibale, were destroyed in May 1941 during the London Blitz.^[2]

Related works

Annibale Carracci, St. Gregory prays for the souls in purgatory, Chatsworth House. Preparatory drawing, which Annibale only partly followed
Saint Gregory at Prayer, the anonymous copy that today occupies the altar of the church of San Gregorio al Celio where the lost painting by Annibale was originally located

References

^ John Rupert Martin, 'Space and time in baroque art', in Princeton Alumni Weekly, 1 March 1976, p. 19.
^ (in Italian) Anna Maria Pedrocchi, San Gregorio al Celio: storia di una abbazia, Rome, 1993, p. 177.

Annibale Carracci

Paintings

List of paintings
The Laughing Youth (1580s)
The Beaneater (1580–1590)
Butcher's Shop (1583)
Crucifixion with Saints (1583)
Corpse of Christ (1583–1585)
An Allegory of Truth and Time (1584–1585)
Baptism of Christ (1585)
Pietà with Saints Clare, Francis and Mary Magdalene (1585)
The Mystic Marriage of St Catherine (c. 1585)
The Vision of Saint Eustace (1585–1586)
Two Children Teasing a Cat (1587–1588)
Madonna and Child with Saints (1588)
Venus with a Satyr and Two Cupids (1588–1590)
Lamentation (1587–1590)
Self-Portrait in Profile (1590s)
Assumption of the Virgin (1590)
The Virgin Appears to Saint Luke and Saint Catherine (1592)
Self-Portrait (1593)
Madonna and Child with Saints (1593)
Resurrection (1593)
Madonna and Child in Glory over the City of Bologna (c. 1593)
Christ and the Samaritan Woman (1593–1594)
Saint Roch Giving Alms (1587–1595)
Fishing (before 1595)
Hunting (before 1595)
River Landscape (c. 1590)
Christ and the Canaanite Woman (1594–1595)
Entombment of Christ (c. 1595)
Venus, Adonis and Cupid (c. 1595)
Camerino Farnese
- The Choice of Hercules (1596)
Christ in Glory with Saints and Odoardo Farnese (c. 1597–1598)
The Death of Saint Francis (1597–1598)
Saint Margaret of Antioch (1599)
Christ Appearing to Saint Anthony Abbot (1598–1600)
Christ Crowned with Thorns (1598–1600)
Christ Crowned with Thorns (Bologna) (c. 1598–1600)
The Madonna and Sleeping Child with the Infant St John the Baptist (c. 1599–1600)
Pietà (c. 1600)
The Three Marys at the Tomb (c. 1600)
Rinaldo and Armida (c. 1601)
Assumption of the Virgin (1600–1601)
Saint Gregory at Prayer (c. 1600–1602)
Domine quo vadis? (c. 1602)
Portable Altarpiece with Pietà and Saints (1603)
Pietà with Two Angels (c. 1603)
Sleeping Venus (c. 1603)
Self-Portrait on an Easel (1603–1604)
The Martyrdom of St Stephen (c. 1603–1604)
Portrait of Monsignor Giovanni Battista Agucchi (1604) (disputed)
Landscape with the Flight into Egypt (c. 1604)
The Dead Christ Mourned (c. 1604)
Rest on the Flight into Egypt (c. 1604)
Danaë (1600–1605)
Saint Didacus of Alcalá Presenting Juan de Herrera's Son to Christ (c. 1606)
Pietà with Saint Francis and Saint Mary Magdalene (1602–1607)
The Loves of the Gods (1608)
The Birth of the Virgin (1605–1609)