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monastery and church, Assisi, Italy
San Francesco, Franciscan monastery and church in Assisi, Italy, begun after the canonization in 1228 of St. Francis of Assisi and completed in 1253. The crypt was added in 1818, when the tomb of St. Francis was opened. The lower church is where the saint is buried, and it has frescoes by Giunta Pisano, Cimabue, Giotto, Pietro Lorenzetti, Simone Martini, and Andrea da Bologna. The upper church has frescoes representing stories of the life of St. Francis by Giotto and his followers, as well as wall paintings of Old and New Testament scenes by Cimabue, Pietro Cavallini, and Jacopo Torriti.
San Francesco, Assisi, Italy. © Marco Sampaolo
San FrancescoThe interior of the San Francesco church, Assisi, Italy. Starlight
On Sept. 26, 1997, a major earthquake shattered the ceiling, raining tons of debris into the sanctuary and fragmenting the frescoes into hundreds of thousands of pieces. (Four people were killed in the church.) Some of the artwork had been restored by 1999, when the church was reopened, and further reconstructions were complete in 2002. But Cimabue's St. Matthew fresco was only 25 percent restorable, and the reconstruction work came to an end in 2006.
Simone Martini: St. Martin Abandoning His ArmsSt. Martin Abandoning His Arms, detail from a fresco series by Simone Martini, about 1325; in the lower Church of San Francesco, Assisi, Italy. SCALA/Art Resource, New York
Giotto: The Assisi problem
…the great double church of San Francesco (St. Francis). By Vasari's time, several frescoes in both upper and lower churches were attributed to Giotto, the most important being the cycle of 28 scenes from the life of St. Francis of Assisi in the nave of the upper church and the…
…most notable landmark is the Basilica of San Francesco (St. Francis), which was begun in 1228, just two years after the saint's death, and was completed in 1253. The two-story basilica consists of an upper church and a lower church. The crypt in the lower church was added in 1818…
St. Francis of Assisi
St. Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan orders of the Friars Minor (Ordo Fratrum Minorum),…
Cimabue, painter and mosaicist, the last great Italian artist in the Byzantine style, which had dominated early medieval painting in Italy. Among his surviving works are the frescoes of New Testament scenes in the upper church…
St. Peter's Basilica