St Bonaventure Receiving from the Virgin the Standard of San Sepolcro

St Bonaventure Receiving from the Virgin the Standard of San Sepolcro (1720, Northampton Museum) depicts a vision attributed to Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (1221–1274), the Franciscan theologian and minister general who was one of the most important figures in medieval Catholic thought. The specific subject — receiving a banner or standard from the Virgin — likely relates to Franciscan devotion to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, which the order had guardianship of from the fourteenth century. By 1720 Solimena's Baroque manner was beginning to show awareness of the lighter, more decorative Rococo current spreading from France, though his fundamental orientation remained the dramatic Neapolitan Baroque he had mastered in the 1690s.

The vision composition places Bonaventure in the lower earthly zone while the Virgin appears in heavenly radiance above, following the established Baroque formula for saintly apparitions. The standard or banner as a physical object exchanged between zones adds a tangible note to the mystical encounter.