FRANSIOLI, Father Joseph
Description:
Half-length seated before a red curtain, facing left, dressed in a black cassock, his right arm resting on a table covered with a green cloth, holding a blue-covered missal in his left hand. Oil on canvas. Signed and dated upper left ‘Adolph Muller 1885.’ The last digit is unclear in the photograph.
Location:
The Brooklyn Historical Society (No. m2007.43)
Provenance:
Gift of his great-grand nephew Charles J. Hamm, President of the Independence Community Bank, Brooklyn in 2007.
Father Joseph [Giuseppe] Fransioli (1817-1890) was the parish priest of St. Peter’s Church, at the corner of Hicks and Warren Streets, Brooklyn, and apparently it became under his guidance one of the important and wealthiest parishes in Brooklyn. He was born in Dalpe, in the Ticino in Switzerland on 30 November 1817, ordained a priest on June 7, 1840, and worked in Italy before coming to the United States, and died in Brooklyn 18 October 1890. The Church of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus & Mary was established by Father Francioli in 1882 as the Catholic Mission of the Italian Colony of the City of Brooklyn. This mission was the first Roman Catholic parish community established specifically for Italian immigrants in the Diocese of Brooklyn, which comprised the whole of Long Island, including the counties of Kings, Queens, Nassau and Suffolk. Sacred Hearts was established as a national parish that served neighborhood parishioners but also welcomed all Italians. Initially, the new Italian parish occupied space belonging to St. Peter’s church, at the corner of Warren and Hicks Streets.
According to the New York Times, 24 November 1895 a statue was to be erected of Father Francioli in Brooklyn for which a subscription fund was raised.
According to The Brooklyn Eagle of Wednesday, October 29, 1890, Father Fransioli made a last Will on 30 September 1890 leaving his entire estate to his lawyer brother Augustus Fransioli. His other relatives were Florinda O’Brien, Mary Piccoli, Olympia Doyle and William J. Fransioli of 30 Third Place, and Alexandrina Fransioli of 482 Henry Street, all of Brooklyn. Helvetius, mCesar and Stefani Fransioli; Dina Roher and Enrichetta Grignardi, all of Canton Ticino in Switzerland; and Jospeh, Augustus, Attitio, Severino, Charles Walter, Pauli, Antoinetti, Asioli and Paulina Romoldi, of New York City.
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This picture is presently the earliest known portrait that Muller-Ury painted in New York. The portrait of Miss Brandeis in the Newark Museum, signed ‘A. Lombardi Muller’ and which is dated 1885 may be documented by a drawing to January 1885, but clearly the full-length would have taken longer to finish, and he must have done this slightly awkward picture around the same time, signing it without any attempt to distinguish himself from his other artists by changing his name.
He arrived in Milwaukee in December 1884, and after refusing to fulfill the commission he had intended to paint there and which had taken him across the Atlantic, he went back to New York to see Archbishop Corrigan who apparently tried to assist him. It seems highly likely that Muller-Ury, at this stage just Adolfo or Adolph Muller as this is signed, would have been referred by Corrigan to Fransioli, as they were both from the Ticino, and the artist no doubt was given help and letters of introduction by him. This may account for the fact that in an early letter to his family from New York he said he hoped to paint the President, as it is known that Fransioli and President Grover Cleveland were friends.
On July 7, 1889, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle (p. 12) described Fransioli’s quarters in the Warren Street rectory as having ‘two or tree fine oil paintings, which the priest had brought with him from Italy, and a painting of himself’ and upstairs in his study ‘a beautiful painting by Miller [sic] of the Madonna and Child. The artist is a friend of Father Fransioli and came to America from the priest’s native…Switzerland.’
