Franciscan art flourished in the Late Middle Ages as the religious movement spread all over Europe as well as Asia. This summer the Accademia in Florence shows a spectacular selection of this kind of art.
From the feeble beginnings of the Franciscan movement, it was peopled by itinerant friars preaching their way through Europe. Soon missionaries were also sent out to spread the Gospel – the Good News – to people in both Asia and later the Americas. However, this movement not only spawned converts and penitentiary congregations. It also created the impetus for a remarkable artistic effort. This summer the Accademia in Firenze has mounted an exhibition, which shows some of the highlights.
The masterpieces in the exhibition are not solely on display for their Franciscan iconographic value but also, indeed primarily, because they were actually commissioned either by Franciscan friars or by private citizens who nurtured a special devotion for the saint and his immediate followers such as, for example, St. Clare, St. Bonaventura, St. Anthony of Padua or St. Bernardino. Thus the exhibition also shows a number of manuscripts an other treasures from the history of the Franciscans. Another important aspect of the exhibition is the wide variety of artists represented. Many may suffer from the delusion that only Giotto and later Fra Angelico were prominent “Franciscan Painters”. This exhibition is an important opportunity to widen the horizon.
Naturally the work of Giunta di Capitano c. 1180 – 1250 (also known as Giunta di Pisano) figures prominently. He was the first official Franciscan painter and as such played a crucial role in the interpretation and dissemination of Franciscan spirituality. As such hiswork served as a very important inspiration for Cimabue and Giotto, who came next. But the work of other artists like Coppo di Marcovaldo is also represented in the exhibition with his portrait of the saint surrounded by the typical legends explicating the deeds of the saint (usually found in the Basilica di Santa Croce). A third treasure is the early portrait by Margarito d’Arezzo. These belong to a group of very early devotional paintings, which grace the exhibition at the beginning.
Franciscans in Asia and China
A large, detached late Gothic fresco from the church of San Francesco in Udine opens the section devoted to the extraordinary life of the Blessed Odoric of Pordenone (1286–1331), a Franciscan, who was driven by missionary fervour, who set out around 1314 on an incredible voyage which was to take him first to Asia Minor, then to meet with the Mongols of the Yuan dynasty in 1323–8, and on to India. Returning home after his adventurous journey, Odoric drafted a detailed Relatio, or report, for the pope on the state of missions in the East. But Odoric of Pordenone’s story was only one of the last in the Franciscan epic in east Asia, inspired by Francis’s own deeds, which had begun in 1245 with John of Pian de Carpine and culminated with John of Montecorvino, who was consecrated the first bishop of Khanbaliq (Beijing) in 1313.
Epistolae et relationes, chiefly from the Apostolic Library in the Vatican and on display in the exhibition, bear the still visible marks of those missions led by ranking Franciscan friars, the majority of whom were papal legates “ad Tartaros” tasked with mending the rift with the Eastern churches, offering the “Tatar king and people” the spiritual benefits of Christianity, curbing any further Mongol aggression against Christendom and forging an alliance designed to contain the spread of Islam in the Holy Land.
Equally significant, and of crucial importance, is a selection of archive documents and archaeological finds from the Museum of the Custody of the Holy Land in Jerusalem and from the Museum of the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth illustrating the artistic context in which the Franciscans lived and worked.
The richness and variety of religious traditions in Asia, beyond the Holy Land and into China – in particular, all of the East Syrian Christian or Nestorian communities and Buddhism – are conveyed in the exhibition by a group of cast bronze Nestorian crosses from the prestigious collection of the Hong Kong University Museum and Art Gallery dating back to the time of the Yuan dynasty (1272–1368) and associated with the Franciscan presence in China in those years.
Maestro di Figline
Returning to the artistic masterpieces inspired by St. Francis’s spiritual drive, particularly in Italy, in the first half of the 14th century we encounter the work of one of the greatest painters from that period, il Maestro di Figline, who was almost certainly a member of the Franciscan Order himself and one of the loftiest and most original followers of Giotto and his style.
Later artists, whose works are also represented at the exhibition, are Carlo Crivelli, Antoniazzo Romano and Bartolomeo della Gatta as well as Nicola Pisano, Domenico di Niccolò dei Cori, Tullio Lombardo and Andrea Della Robbia.
The exhibition is curated, and the catalogue edited, by Angelo Tartuferi, director of the Accademia Gallery, and by Francesco D’Arelli, scholarly director of the Commissio Sinica.
The exhibition is promoted by the Ministero dei beni e delle attività culturali e del turismo with the Segretariato regionale del Ministero dei beni e delle attività culturali e del turismo per la Toscana, the former Soprintendenza Speciale per il Patrimonio Storico, Artistico ed Etnoantropologico e per il Polo Museale della città di Firenze, the Galleria dell’Accademia and Firenze Musei, together with the Order of Friars Minor, the Custody of the Holy Land and the Commissio Sinica with the Pontificia Università Antonianum.
VISIT:
L’Arte Di Francesco. Capolavori d’arte italiana e terre d’asia dal XIII al XV secolo
Franciscan Art: Masterpieces of Art and Asian lands from the 13th to the 15th centuries
Galleria dell’Accademia, Firenze
31.03.2015 – 11.10.2015
SEE:
There is a lovely gallery of exhibits here
CATALOGUE:
L’Arte Di Francesco. Capolavori d’arte italiana e terre d’asia dal XIII al XV secolo
By Angelo Tartuferi andFrancesco D’Arelli
Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence
ISBN: 9788809808010
FEATURED PHOTO:
Pittore friulano del 1440
Due scene della vita del beato Odorico da Pordenone. c. 1440. Chiesa di San Francesco, Udine