Saint Francis of Assisi, a watershed saint, was one of those remarkable few who crack open the gospel in such a way that everything that follows is altered. If you think of Francesco di Bernardone (1182-1226) as a garden statue, a scriptural literalist unaware of complexity, or as a simpleton incapable of nuance, you probably know too little about him.
Francis was not much to look at (although Lawrence Cunningham says he is the most depicted of saints), but he was someone with whom subsequent centuries had to deal. His order of lay penitents, for example, spread so rapidly in Western Europe that it helped bring about the demise of feudalism, exempting as it did its members from loyalty oaths and the obligation to carry arms. As for the man’s effect on a live audience, here is an eyewitness account, given by a university student who heard him in Bologna in 1222: “I saw Saint Francis preach in the marketplace in front of the courthouse, where nearly all in the town were gathered. But the beginning of his sermon was ‘Angels, Men, Devils.’ He now spoke so well and skillfully on these three kinds of reasonable spirits that many learned men who were present were not a little astonished to hear an unlearned man (idiota) speak thus. But the whole theme of his discourse was to assuage enmities and to create peace. His habit was dirty, his appearance insignificant, his face not handsome. But God gave his word such power that many noble families, between whom there was much old-time enmity and spilled blood, allowed themselves to be induced to make peace.” On the seven-hundredth anniversary of Francis’s death, so unique was his conformity to the gospel that Pope Pius XI called him “the Second Christ.” Who compares?
Over the centuries, Francis’s hometown in Umbria—the green heart of Italy—has become a locus for Christian pilgrimage. Assisi hopes to be so again during the upcoming millennial celebration. But two years ago the town was struck by a severe earthquake and the damage was considerable. In particular, the huge Basilica of Saint Francis, begun two years after the saint’s death and one of the most architecturally and artistically commanding structures in Western Christendom, was rocked. The Italian government, the church, and various philanthropies are working frantically to restore it. For during the first century following Francis’s death, the raising of the great double-decker church had created a veritable artists’ laboratory, which in turn gave impetus to the Italian Renaissance. Giotto, Cimabue, Torriti, Lorenzetti, Simone Martini, and countless others all worked here—to perfection.
While the 1997 earthquake slowed the march of pilgrims—the lower church with the tomb of Saint Francis still welcomes them; the upper church will reopen at Christmas—a new sense of vulnerability hangs over the town. A year ago a visitor found the Church of Saint Clare bolstered by scaffolding, its famous San Damiano crucifix on view at only brief intervals.
Still, the earthquake may not have been without its benefits. A much needed retrofitting is under way for the basilica. And now a traveling exhibit is making Assisi available to those who might not otherwise get there. Various Italian institutions, the Franciscan order, and the inventive curators of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others, have assembled a display of nearly seventy small masterworks from the museum adjacent to the basilica (known as the Treasury), along with thirty other period pieces gleaned from collections around the world. The exhibition, “The Treasury of Saint Francis of Assisi,” benefits the basilica’s restoration fund and remains in New York until June 27. It will then travel to San Francisco’s Palace of the Legion of Honor, before returning home. The exhibit consists of paintings by Italian masters such as Sassetta, Fra Angelico, and di Paolo; sculptures, reliquaries, manuscripts, weavings, and liturgical objects; and a series of large-scale color photographs that convey the grandeur of the basilica and the gravity of the recent damage. The photographs—much as a large-scale photograph of the Acropolis in an exhibit of marbles from the Parthenon—help orient the viewer and place the Treasury objects in proper perspective; for despite their beauty, the objects in the collection can’t help but fail to convey the peaceful grandeur of Assisi.
Among the most impressive objects are the forty-plus paintings. The majority are small temperas on wood, and almost all deal with iconographic subjects: That is, they are rendered in such a style that both their execution and their themes inspire. While most of these works are from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, their artistic variety demonstrates the creative explosion that was taking place, attributable in part to Saint Francis’s emphasis on the humanity of Christ. According to Jaroslav Pelikan, Francis’s understanding of the Incarnation and Passion led to the more naturalistic art of the Italian Renaissance.
In terms of color, the most striking uses of hue in the exhibit are the blues in two sets: the largest and perhaps oldest portrait of Francis on display (Saint Francis and Four Posthumous Miracles by the so-called Master of the Treasury; see page 3); and several crucifixes with saints by a thirteenth-century Umbrian (?) artist known as the Master of the Blue Crucifixes. Of the two sets, the Francis in the miracles panel is strikingly Byzantine: A gold-leaf background makes prominent the angular saint in his blue habit. He forms the central column of the composition, flanked by two vertical blue and red arabesques. At each of the four corners of the panel is a rendition of a miracle, attributed to the saint’s intercession. The central Francis holds a red, lance-like cross in one hand, a red Gospel book in the other, as the red marks of his stigmata jump out like coals. Large horizontal blue strips with gold filigree separate the upper and lower miracles, and draw the eye to the center. There is a rich sense of Byzantine pictorial practice here, but it is coupled with an exotic, inventive, almost Bonnard-like use of color.
The Master of the Blue Crucifixes—responsible for the second set—is represented by five contributions. According to the catalogue (The Treasury of Saint Francis of Assisi, edited by Giovanni Morello and Laurence B. Kanter, Electa, $35,221 pp.), this unnamed thirteenth-century Umbrian (or Emilian?) artisf s works were unrivaled until Duccio. The curators have diligently combined his works from the Treasury, a Madonna from a private collection, a processional cross from the Smith College collection, and two magnificent saints from the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. Each piece is worth attention.
The blue colors of the Treasury’s double-sided crucifix are unforgettable, both for their intensity and for the poignancy they engender. This crucifix (see page 18) is similar to but smaller and less intricate than the older San Damiano cross. The latter uses reds and has an open-eyed Christ who appears to be serenely triumphant. In contrast, the blue crucifix—Jesus hangs on a cross of indigo, superimposed over a gold background; 19 his drapery and that of Mary and Saint John are blue—has a Christ whose eyes are closed in agony and whose body is whipped in pain. This crucifix is a signal example of Francis’s insight into the humanity of Jesus that led to the new realism of the Renaissance.
A large John and Mary on loan from the National Gallery are more developed than the similar figures in the double-sided crucifix. Their drapery is more detailed, their faces more deeply fashioned and evocative. Mary’s left hand cradles her head in anguish. Her right hand is extended toward the (now missing) figure of her crucified son. The artist has caught her at the moment when insurmountable pain overwhelms the psyche.
One of the great feats of museum sleuthing on display here is the reassemblage of a ten-part altarpiece by the so-called Master of Saint Francis. Considered the foremost Italian painter before Cimabue, this artist’s two-sided screen may have originally adorned the lower church in Assisi. The Met has gathered its various far-flung elements from museums and collections around the world. Other notable paintings include Sassetta’s playful and dynamic Saint Christopher; The Madonna of Humility by Lorenzo Monaco, warm though stately; Gherardo Stamina’s Saint Lawrence, his robe a blaze of color (see cover); and Fra Angelico’s small Saint Anthony of Padua, not on a par with most of his work, but not to be missed. Two figures by Pietro Lorenzetti, the Sienese master, also deserve note: his Virgin and Child and Saint Margaret. The Margaret (or Cecelia!) must have been part of a larger work. This young woman has the self-assurance of a martyr but seems not to suffer from overblown self-consciousness. Her golden hair, braided at the bottom and adorned with flowers, melds into a gold, tooled halo. Her face has a depth and soulfulness that would have been unachievable in an earlier period.
Such pieces as this allow you to forget a certain disquietude that creeps in at other points in the exhibit. This unease arises particularly before some highly decorative chalices, textiles, reliquaries, and manuscripts. How was it that members of the Franciscan order, dedicated to simplicity and eschewing property ownership, came to occupy the papal throne and to finance the great basilica in Assisi? The story is complex, but this exhibit makes it clear that some of Francis’s devotees left no stone unturned to build him a monument. Francis himself had not wanted his community’s churches to be opulent; he simply wanted them to be well-swept! But in his Testament, composed a month before his death, he had said that “above everything, I want this most holy Sacrament to be honored and venerated and reserved in places which are richly ornamented.” This proved to be a needle’s eye fit for a dromedary. And since Francis had a rich disposition and a keen appreciation of beauty—tonal, poetic, and visual—it is not hard to imagine that some of his followers would take him at his word and even master the art of ecclesiastical dispensation.
Such dichotomies can’t be missed here: the elegant simplicity of an early Franciscan psalter rests alongside a regally illustrated missal, a gift to the Treasury from the Franciscan tertiary, Louis IX of France; a simple bronze cross that belonged to Francis’s companion Giles is stationed just a few feet from the gilded and enamel chalice of the first Franciscan pope, Nicholas IV. Then there is the room of reliquaries: one to house Saint Andrew’s finger, another for Saint Blaise’s tooth, a third for a cord used to scourge Jesus, etc. Today, it is not easy to get one’s mind around such pieces, or to dispel the antiquarian flavor they exude. We are more likely to maintain a loved one’s memory by treasuring a photograph. We preserve our heroes’ exploits with autographs, recorded voices, or million-dollar home-run balls. Even our saintly martyrs—Oscar Romero or Ita Ford—we are more likely to honor by recalling their words, visiting their graves, or working to further their ideals. So this exhibit has two competing gifts: It gives rise to artistic elation and to complex feelings about a tradition that knows a great deal about both saints and dross—some of it exquisite.
