Abstract
Entombed in the Lower Basilica of the pilgrimage church of San Francesco in Assisi are the remains of Francis Bernardone, who was canonized in 1228 just over twenty months after his death.1 The pilgrimage church was built between his canonization and 1253, and its walls were decorated during the following century. Probably painted in the 1290s, the register below the clerestory of the nave walls in the Upper Basilica at Assisi is frescoed with twenty-eight scenes from the biography of St. Francis (figure 1.1).2
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Notes
Charles Harrison, “Giotto and the ‘Rise of Painting,’” in Diana Norman, ed., Siena, Florence and Padua: Art, Society and Religion 1280–1400, 2 vols. (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1995), I, p. 88.
Dossals are large panel paintings in Byzantine style; the St. Francis dossals were made between 1235 and about 1280. The eight early dossals are as follows: Bonaventura Berlinghieri, San Francesco, Pescia, 1235; Bardi St. Francis Master, Convento di Santa Croce, Florence, ca. 1245; Master of Cross 434, Museo Civico, Pistoia, ca. 1250; (circle of) Giunta Pisano, Pinacoteca Nazionale, Pisa, ca. 1255; Giunta Pisano, Sacro Convento, Tesoro of the Basilica, Assisi, ca. 1253; follower of Giunta Pisano, Pinacoteca Vaticana, The Vatican, ca. 1255; Master of the Paliotto of Peter, Museo Diocesano, Orte, ca. 1260; Guido di Graziano, Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena, ca. 1280. For more information, please consult William R. Cook, Images of St. Francis of Assisi (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1999).
In the Miracle at the Tomb of St Clement in the narthex of the lower church of San Clemente (1109–1115), a mother “...finds her child safe by the underwater tomb’s canopied altar...and then she is shown holding the child,” illustrated in C. R. Dodwell, The Pictorial Arts of the West 800–1200 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993)
Howard M. Davis, “Gravity in the Paintings of Giotto,” in Giotto e il suo tempo. Atti del Congresso Internazionale per la Celebrazione del VII Centenario della nascità di Giotto (Rome: De Luca, 1971), pp. 367–82.
Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory, A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (New York and London: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
This text, once attributed to Bonaventure, now is given to Giovanni de Caulibus and dated to after 1346 and before 1364. For more information about the dating of the Meditations as well as analysis of the San Francesco Crib at Greccio, see: Beth A. Mulvaney, “The Beholder as Witness: The ‘Crib at Greccio’ from the Upper Church of San Francesco, Assisi and Franciscan Influence on Late Medieval Art in Italy,” in William R. Cook, ed., The Art of the Franciscan Order in Italy (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005), pp. 169–88.
This is also true of other images of this period as pointed out by Felicity Ratté, “Representing the Commonplace, Architectural Portraits in Trecento Painting,” Studies in Iconography 22 (2001): 102
The garment worn, known as a Housse, is defined as an “outer garment with wide, short sleeves forming a cape or pèlerine, buttoned in front, with two little tabs below the neck.” This long gown survived in ecclesiastic and academic circles long after fashionable young men replaced the surcoat with short garments. See François B. Boucher, 20,000 Years of Costume, The History of Costume and Personal Adornment (New York: Harry Abrams, 1965
See C. Stephen Jaeger, The Envy of Angels: Cathedral Schools and Social Ideas in Medieval Europe, 950–1200 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), pp. 9–11
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© 2009 Cynthia Ho, Beth A. Mulvaney, and John K. Downey
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Snyder, J. (2009). Bearing Witness: The Physical Expression of the Spiritual in the Narrative Cycle at Assisi. In: Ho, C., Mulvaney, B.A., Downey, J.K. (eds) Finding Saint Francis in Literature and Art. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230623736_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230623736_3
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