The Head of Saint Francis in Ecstasy
about 1620 - 1632
Cerano worked mainly in Milan, and became the first president of the art academy founded there in 1620 by Cardinal Federico Borromeo. The intense religiosity and expressive realism of this painting is typical both of his work and of religious painting in Lombardy at this period more generally. Similar pictures of Saint Francis by Cerano are in the Museo Civico d’Arte Antica, Turin, and the Brera, Milan.
