Jean-François Gondi (1584–1654), archbishop of Paris, sold in 1624 to;(1) Balthasar Gerbier (1592–1663), London, for; George Villiers (1592–1628), Duke of Buckingham, York House, London, by inheritance in 1628 to his son; George Villiers (1628–1687), York House, London,(2) and in exile on the Continent, sold 1650 in Antwerp to;(3) Leopold Wilhelm (1614– 1662), archduke of Austria and governor of the Spanish Netherlands, as a gift for his brother;(4) Ferdinand III (1608–1657), Holy Roman Emperor, Prague, sold 1749 to;(5) August III (1696–1763), elector of Saxony, king of Poland and grand duke of Lithuania, Jagdschloss Hubertusburg in Wermsdorf (near Dresden) (as Caravaggio);(6) (Sale, Amsterdam, Hendrik de Winter, 22 May 1765, lot 18, sold for 220 guilders to);(7) [Conan].(8) Private collection, France, sold 2002 through; [Elizabeth Royer, Paris to]; LACMA.
(1) Cammell 1939, p. 360. In a letter to Lord Buckingham in 1624, Balthasar Gerbier, who was one of the agents helping to secure paintings for the duke, mentioned "a St. Francis, a good-sized painting, from the hand of the cavalier Baglione as good as Michael Angelo Carazoago [sic]."
(2) Davies 1907, p. 380, "Ballian or Michel Angelo.— The picture of St. Francis." The 1635 inventory, known as the Rawlinson MS and published by Davies, is considered the most comprehensive evidence of the duke’s collection. According to Davies, p. 376, "The Rawlinson MS . . . enumerates no less than 330 pictures which were at York House, as well as over a hundred pieces of statuary at Chelsea." The collection was seized during the English Civil War. The largest part of the collection was returned to the family and sent to Antwerp in December 1648. See Garas 1987, p. 114.
(3) The manuscript inventory made ca. 1649 includes those works sent to Antwerp for sale in Antwerp in 1650. It is published in Buckingham 1758, p. 14, "By Baglioni, St. Francis dying, and two angels comforting him. 5f. 0 [x] 4f. 6."
(4) Garas 1987, p. 115.
(5) Garas 1987, p. 116, notes that a number of masterworks were sold from the collection to August III in 1742 and 1749. Approximately two dozen paintings had been transferred to Vienna in 1721 and 1723. On p. 120 she notes that the Baglione was sold in 1749. She assumes the painting is the one then in an American private collection, now in Chicago.
(6) Inventory by Pietro Maria Guarienti (1678–1753), inspector of the Dresdener Gemäldegalerie. See Weddigen 2004, p. 131, inv. no. 303, "Michelagnolo Amerghi da Carabagvio? Quadro in tela, con San Francesco in estasi due Angioli, che l’assistano, fù della galleria di Praga." The drawing (KupferstichKabinett, Dresden, inv. no. A 127804, in A 561.2) was published in Recueil d’éstampes d’après les plus célèbres tableaux de la Galerie Royale de Dre[s?]de [sic], 2 vols. (Dresden, 1753–57). The publication followed the furnishing of the painting gallery on the Judenhof in 1746.
(7) Listed in the sale as "M. A. de Caravaggio, Een Stervende St. Franciscus."
(8) Liebsch 2006–7, pp. 53, 55, fig. 16. Conan, or possibly Conau, is unidentified but may have been a dealer. He is also listed as the buyer for two other lots.
