Early Italian Art (1250-1400): Assisi and the illusion of reality

Fascinating study day organised by the London Art History Society and held at Friends House focusing on the role of Assisi in Early Italian Art.

This was a third day in a series on this early period of Italian art and this time focused on the art of Assisi. I’d been a number of years ago and it was lovely to have this reminder of what I’d seen and it made me want to go back soon.  We went through the art chronologically with an obvious focus on images of St Francis.

In the morning we looked at the art in the lower church from around Francis’s tomb from the earliest period soon after his death. This work was mainly by Maestro di San Fancesco and Cimabue. The lecturer John Renner took us through the works and talked about how these works defined the iconography of the saint. We then moved onto the Upper Church and a Giotto fest, or is it? John talked about how the earliest Frescos were by other artists from Rome such as the Isaac Master shown here. He also looked at whether Giottos would have painted all these works or whether he can just be seen as the designer with a workshop working for him

In the afternoon we moved back to the lower church to look at the later fresco’s by not only Giotto but also Simone Martini and Pietro Lorenzetti. He talked about how side chapels were added to the lower church partly to regulate the flow of pilgrims to the tomb. These were endowed by rich families who commissioned their decoration. We talked about how these pictures represented a modern saint in the contemporary world.  We finished the day by looking at art commissioned by women and of women with the growth of the Poor Clares.  Again we started in the basilica with an early altar piece of Clare and how this set her iconography before moving into the order’s own churches.

A theme throughout the day was of how Assisi was a melting pot for art and how the Popes brought in the best artists to celebrate these new saints. We get an idea of artists from Rome whose work in that city has been lost as well artists like Giotto coming from Florence and then from Sienna in the later period. Not only did these artists bring their ideas to the city but took back what they learnt to their own cities creating a flow of creative ideas.