Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria present the first monographic exhibition dedicated to the most important but unknown Umbrian artist of the 13th century. That artist was the very first to depict Saint Francis as alter Christus.
For the first time, sixty masterpieces reveal the secrets of the most important artist to have worked in Central Italy after Giunta Pisano and before Cimabue.
The exhibition is being held in the framework of the celebrations marking the eighth centennial of the appearance of the stigmata on Saint Francis of Assisi.
The thirteenth was a century of enormous social, economic and cultural upheavals. Umbria was to prove itself the region that was best capable of absorbing and developing on the religious and cultural revolution generated by the birth of the mendicant orders, in particular the Franciscans, transforming it into positive energy. Umbria and Assisi, where some of the most singular works of the art of the age were created, became the new fulcrum in the system of European arts, where the mysterious figure emerged of the Master of Saint Francis, to whom scholars are still incapable of giving a name. Indeed, this is why he is known after the panel with the effigy of Saint Francis painted on the same board on which tradition tells us that the saint passed away, now preserved in the Museum of the Porziuncola at the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, in Assisi, and exceptionally on show in the exhibition in Perugia.
It was to him that the friars minor turned, first to work on the stained glass in the Upper Basilica, flanking the master craftsmen from Germany and France, then to decorate the entire Lower Basilica. Creating myriad different friezes, in imitation of enamels and the fine work of goldsmiths, the Master set the first cycle of Stories of the Life of Saint Francis in the basilica’s single nave, telling them in parallel with those of the Life of Christ, as specified by Bonaventura da Bagnoregio, then the General of the Order: for the first time, the saint was identified as Alter Christus, a man whose similarity to Christ himself also extended to his body, with the gift of the stigmata.
“Alter Christus” (“another Christ”) means that although Christ himself is present to his Church, the priest acts as “another Christ” by virtue of his ordination.
The Enigma of the Master of Saint Francis. The Stil Novo in Thirteenth-Century Umbria
Perugia, National Gallery of Umbria (Corso Pietro Vannucci, 19)
10 March – 9 June 2024
Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria.
L’ENIGMA DEL MAESTRO DI SAN FRANCESCO
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