Spirituality in Conflict


Book Description

Few saints have received so much attention as Francis of Assisi and few artists so much attention as Giotto di Bondone--and yet the master's cycle of Saint Francis in the Bardi Chapel of Santa Croce in Florence has been little discussed. Similarly, the remarkable panel that now serves as the chapel's altarpiece has been given only cursory consideration by historians and art historians--even though this panel, with its twenty narrative scenes of the saint's life, represents the most complete visualization of mid-thirteenth-century Franciscan spirituality which has survived. In this book Goffen shoes how the history of Santa Croce itself, which contains both of these works of art, parallels and summarizes the early history of the Order of Friars Minor. Santa Croce was and is the most important Franciscan church of Florence and, like the order itself in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, it was bitterly divided into opposing factions, the Spirituals and the Conventuals. We see here that, tragically, the source of their disagreement lay in the character of Saint Francis himself. Unlike the Dominicans--and, indeed, unlike all other contemporary religious orders--the Friars Minor fostered a "cult of personality" of their founder. Precisely because Francis provided the example for his friars, the way in which his character was presented in art and in literature became of the utmost concern to the order, a matter requiring deep consideration and, eventually, careful control. But despite their disagreements, the factions were agreed about one central point: Francis was unique in having received the wounds of Crucifixion as a sign of divine approbation. Goffen considers the church of Santa Croce, the Bardi Dossal, and Giotto's cycle of Saint Francis both in relation to each other and in the context of the history and spirituality of the Franciscan order during its first century. The dossal is the visual equivalent of the writings of Celano, the first biographer of Saint Francis. The hero of the dossal is the Spiritual ideal, but by the time the Bardi family had commissioned its chapel of Saint Francis, almost a century after the dossal was painted, the Conventuals had effectively taken over the church and friary of Santa Croce. Giotto's cycle of Saint Francis in the Bardi Chapel is understood as the representation of the Conventual Saint Francis, the purposeful and controlled hero of Bonaventure's biography, which had been imposed as the only official life of a saint.




From St. Francis to Giotto


Book Description




Giotto and His Publics


Book Description

Political strife and religious faction lacerated fourteenth-century Italy. Giotto's commissions are best understood against the background of this social turmoil. They reflected the demands of his patrons, the requirements of the Franciscan Order, and the restlessly inventive genius of the painter. Julian Gardner examines this important period of Giotto's path-breaking career through works originally created for Franciscan churches: Stigmatization of Saint Francis from San Francesco at Pisa, now in the Louvre, the Bardi Chapel cycle of the Life of St. Francis in Santa Croce at Florence, and the frescoes of the crossing vault above the tomb of Saint Francis in the Lower Church of San Francesco at Assisi.







Francis: The Journey and the Dream


Book Description

In 1972, a young Franciscan friar named Murray Bodo wrote a unique book about the life of St. Francis of Assisi. Francis: The Journey and the Dream offered readers a unique combination of lyrical prose and brief, absorbing vignettes that inspired hundreds of thousands of people all over the world to contemplate the life of the famous saint and see him in a new way. Fifty years and over 200,000 copies later, this book still captivates people everywhere, and Fr. Bodo is still writing about St. Francis and the Franciscan way of life. His poetic style continues to draw readers in, and he himself continues to gaze in wonder at the saint who worked nearly his entire life to rebuild the church. This special anniversary edition includes a new preface in which Fr. Bodo reflects on a half century spent immersed in the Franciscan way.




Buon Fresco


Book Description

Tiré du site Internet http://www.mackbooks.co.uk: "St Francis of Assisi was the saint who humanised sainthood. He was a man with an ordinary body and ordinary desires. As Tacita Dean writes, 'He rolled naked in the snow to quell his urges and trod the land on paths and roads that are still wending their way through the hills and forests of Umbria today ... His concerns are contemporary : his love of the earth is ecology, his care for its creatures, animal welfare, and his understanding of his fellow humanity is modern-day social science. He is the saint whom mankind can realistically aspire to emulate, because his humanness, his humanity lies just within our mortal reach.' In her work, Buon Fresco, 2014, Dean filmed details of Giotto's frescos in the Upper Basilica in Assisi using a macro lens, in order, she said, to have the perspective of the artist himself. Giotto humanised the depiction of people in painting in a parallel way to St Francis's humanising of sainthood, and this moment, when the radical artist depicted the radical saint is an extremely important juncture in the history of art. Frescoes are meant to be seen from a distance, so this book provides a revelatory view of the minutiae and sophistication of Giotto's brushstrokes, which at times anticipates the future canon of mark marking in Western painting."




The Making of Assisi


Book Description

For a moment at the close of the 13th century the town of Assisi was the focus for the two greatest powers in the Latin church. The election of Nicholas IV was the catalyst for the creation of frescoes in the Basilica of San Francesco. In this book the authors investigate the particular moment the frescoes were made casting new light on their patronage and iconography.




A Boy Named Giotto


Book Description

Eight-year-old Giotto the shepherd boy confesses his dream of becoming an artist to the painter Cimabue, who teaches him how to make marvelous pigments from minerals, flowers, and eggs and takes him on as his pupil.










Recent Books