This work is part of the Frater Franciscus collection, a collection of ten etchings by Robert Carroll in which the American artist offers a contemporary interpretation of the work and message of Saint Francis of Assisi: these works have the external form of the figurative story, but conceal a plot of introspection so delicate as to suggest a sense of instability and subtle restlessness.
Born in Painesville (Ohio) in 1934, Carroll trained artistically at the Cleveland Institute of Art and at Western Reserve University, where he graduated in Fine Arts in 1957. During his military service he alternated his studies in nuclear physics with the company of the most famous names of the Beat generation, from Allen Ginsberg to Jack Kerouac, while he became friends with Willem De Kooning, one of the greatest American exponents of abstract impressionism, who introduced him to the Italian cultural and artistic environment, which the painter knew well due to the many cultural exchanges he had in those years. Then, just twenty-five years old, Carroll arrived in Rome and soon began to frequent the cultural environment, establishing important relationships with personalities of the caliber of Elio Vittorini and Salvatore Quasimodo. In Italy he met and married the writer Simona Mastrocinque, daughter of the well-known film director Camillo Mastrocinque. In his career he has held over 250 exhibitions in Italy and abroad, many of which in important museums: we remember the solo exhibitions at the Cloister Museum of Santa Chiara in Naples (2000), at the Palazzo Farnese Museum in Piacenza (2001) and at the Michetti Museum in Francavilla al Mare (2005). He taught painting at the Cleveland Academy of Art.
He is known for having created spectacular multi-visions, commissioned by public bodies and now present in museums, as well as having created sets for the Teatro Stabile in Turin and that of Rome. In his artistic career, Carroll never loses sight of painting, which always remains his main activity, to which he combines the creation of important etchings, as evidenced by the ten engravings dedicated to the Canticle of the Creatures of St. Francis and the other two dedicated to St. Anthony of Padua.