Benozzo Gozzoli, teacher in Montefalco
Benozzo di Lese, better known as
Benozzo Gozzoli, is born in
Florence in 1420 and dies to
Pistoia in 1497. He
was student and collaborator of
Beato Angelico in
Orvieto and in
Vatican.
Together with the
Perugino he has been the exponent that in the first
phase of the
Renaissance mostly recalls to the old-Gothic painting rather than to the search of
classical figures. More than an interpreter, he is considered a sort of divulger
of the expressive forms and the Tuscan pictorial language. He intensely worked
in the whole central
Italy, leaving in the frescos of
Montefalco a notable testimony of his art.
San Fortunato Church
It entertains three frescos realised by
Benozzo Gozzoli around 1450. One "
Madonna with Child among the Saints
Francis and Bernardino from Siena" sets in the niche of the portal,
his "
Madonna with Child and an Angel second-rate musician",
and the "
St. Fortunate in throne". Dominant theme of this
cycle of frescos is the Marian one, which was completed by a table destined to
the greater altar, the "
Assumption of the Virgin ", today
conserved in the
Vatican Picture-Gallery. The fresco and the altar
devoted to
San Fortunato give an accent to the meaning of the presence
of relics of the saint preserved in the same church.
St. Francis Museum Church
Here in the 1452 Benozzo Gozzoli realises
an imposing cycle of frescos showing "
Histories of the life of St.
Francis". It's about twelve panels prepared upward on three orders
legible by left toward right and from the lower part to the upper part. Such
work constitutes a fundamental document of the Umbrian painting in the first
Renaissance, but was ignored by the
Vasari. This determined a certain
superficiality in the judgement of the following criticism, partially revised
recently from more balanced considerations.
Other two works owe their origin to the
local orders, and these are the "
Madonna
of the humility", painted for
Frā Jacopo da Montefalco, today
guarded in
Vienna, in the
Kunsthistorisches Museum and the "
Sant'Orsola",
commissioned by the clerics of Montefalco and exposed in the
National
Gallery of Art of Washington, D.C.
The frescos of Montefalco
-
The anonymous Umbrian and the Histories of Santa Chiara .
The factory of Assisi and the process of
constant embellishment that the
Basilica during t...
The niche of the Perugino
-
The
Museum of St. Francis contains a precious work, dated 1503, produced by the
Perugino during his stay in
Montefalco. It's a grandiose fresco
coverin...
Wyne Gastronomy - Sagrantino Wine - docg -
The hills around Montefalco, to the south of Perugia in the heart of Umbria, represent the richest and most varied grape...
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