Saint Praxedis

This unusual painting shows Saint Praxedis squeezing blood from a cloth that she collected from a Christian martyr’s wounds into an ornate vessel. Artists did not often depict this less revered saint. The first identified owner of this painting, which was already extensively modified, judging from the photographs from the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, was Ján Pálffy, and it hung in his bedroom in the chateau in Kráľová pri Senci. Shading suppressed the visibility of the blood pouring into the vessel to which a lid was added, as was revealed during the restoration of this work.

The pathetic representation of the female figure of the Saint is related to the theme, but it also has certain stylistic relations. Her interesting pose with a peculiar turn reveals connections to the work of Francesco Furini (1603–1646) the Florentine painter. He brought a certain nobleness to this attractive model through the diagonal arrangements and unnatural pose and he succeeded in using soft modeling by sfumato in order to achieve emotional tension. We know of the related adaptation of this theme from dozens of almost identical versions. The closest of them, in the Museo de Arte in Ponce, is attributed to another Florentine painter, Simone Pignoni. The sources based on which the life and work of Pignoni were compiled do not incorporate any actual data related to the painting of the Saint. The grasping of the pose is repeated in the large, documented painting, David and Abigail which is in Pistoia. It appears in numerous paintings reduced to half figures which represent the same type of woman in an almost identical pose with modified attributes.

It is the painting style in which individual replicas of Saint Praxedis differ. Many were obviously not created by Pignoni himself and are attributed only to his workshop.The saint in the Bratislava painting, which is also depicted in a more rapid style and more loosely, is also probably a workshop replica or copy. 

Zuzana Ludiková ● LUDIKOVÁ, Zuzana - BURAN, Dušan. Talianska maľba = Italian Painting. Bratislava : Slovenská národná galéria, 2013. 242 strán. ISBN 9788080591748.