The Tambov Regional Picture Gallery collection has a study to the Death of St. Joseph painting. It was done by Italian artist Francesco Trevisani, a representative of late Baroque.

The painter was born in Capodistria, modern Koper now in Slovenia. He began to master the trade when he was a child. It was his father, an architect, who taught him to draw. His first professional teacher was Antonio Zanchi, who the young man took lessons from in Venice. From him Francesco learned to paint nude figures, use the effects of chiaroscuro and theatrical angles.

At 22, Francesco Trevisani moved to Rome. There he worked at depicting Prophet Baruch in the San Giovanni Laterano cathedral and frescoes for the cupola of the cathedral at Urbino. Shortly afterwards, Trevisani became one of the best-known painters in Rome. He had his own art school and soon became a member of the Academy of Arcadia, an Italian society of poets and lovers of art. During that period the artist also painted the church of the ancient town of Narni, and the altar of the Basilica of the royal Mafra palace in Portugal.

In 1712, when Francesco Trevisani was already 56, he painted the chapel of the Sant’Ignazio church in Rome. It belonged to Cardinal Giuseppe Sacripanti and was dedicated to his patron saint. The artist made a few studies; one of them is called the Death of St. Joseph in the name of the customer’s patron saint.

The History of Joseph the Carpenter, one of the apocrypha, describes the story of Joseph’s death at the age of 111 in the presence of Christ, Virgin Mary and the angels who descended from heaven. One of the angels was holding St. Joseph’s symbol, the flowering staff. This is the scene depicted by the artist.

Until 1919, the Death of St. Joseph picture had been part of collector Pavel Stroganov’s collection in his estate Znamenskoye, Tambov Guberniya. Its former title was Healing of the Paralytic. In 1961, when the work ended up at the Tambov Picture Gallery, the art scholars of the State Hermitage and the Pushkin Fine Arts Museum were able to determine the true subject of the work.