Pier Francesco Mola ( 1612-1666 ) was another prominent Italian artist of the Baroque period . Because his painting The Vision of St . Bruno in the J . Paul Getty Museum shows similarities in subject and composition to the other 17th-century picture mentioned above , his name has been suggested as a possible author for it . Both pictures show a recumbent hermit saint in a wilderness experiencing a heavenly vision . The sentiment expressed in these two pictures , however , is entirely different .
In Mola ’ s painting the founder of the Carthusian monastic order reaches forward to welcome the celestial vision . But compare the men ’ s body language . The man in the other painting is utterly awestruck and overwhelmed . Here the scene is not set in daylight , in a bucolic landscape , and in an atmosphere of calm . It is night . No happy cherubs look down . An eerie , supernatural light illumines the dark sky and the clouds are dynamically in motion , as if something is about to happen . The mood of Mola ’ s St . Bruno strikes me essentially as an artistic confection , lacking in the gravitas one would associate with an event of this importance . By contrast , the serious mood of the nocturnal vision seems to carry the heartfelt spirit of Counter-Reformation mysticism , such as that found in the writings of St . Teresa of Avila and St . John of the Cross , as if the man on the ground could be coming out of his “ dark night of the soul .
Pier Francesco Mola , The Vision of St . Bruno , J . Paul Getty Museum | Photo : Public Domain
One Mola expert I conferred with , who was recommended to me by the Metropolitan Museum , felt sure this was not by Mola but agreed with my assessment of its unique poetic spirituality . His opinion was that the subject probably is St . Bruno , and that it was from the Roman school , in the “ orbit of Pier Francesco Mola .”
Hermit Saint by unidentified 17th century artist Photo : J . Craig Sweat Photography
42 ART CHOWDER MAGAZINE