It is humbling to realize how much has been written, yet how much remains uncertain, about the art associated with the medieval Franciscan order. Considering the tremendous growth of mendicant orders—Franciscan, Dominican, and other—in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and the extravagant claims that have been made about their cultural influence, the attention given to the art of the Franciscans is not misplaced. Scholars have linked the Franciscan movement of the thirteenth century to the rise of naturalism and humanism in the visual arts, to the development of narrative painting and the vernacular lyric, to significant changes in Marian piety, and to the renewal of the art of fresco; more broadly, the Franciscans are said to bear a key role in the development of a major shift in European sensibility, promoting emotional or affective empathy as a core component of religious response. Only through careful study of the monuments can the validity and significance of these broad claims be assessed, and so, the collection of essays in The Art of the Franciscan Order in Italy, edited by William R. Cook, is a welcome addition to the literature. This is the first and the only primarily art-historical volume in an ongoing series published by Brill titled, The Medieval Franciscans.

Not surprisingly, the basilica of S. Francesco, Assisi, commands a central place in the volume; seven of the nine studies are directly concerned with the head and mother-church of the order. Another, in discussing representations of Francis’s posthumous miracles, refers back to S. Francesco, site of Francis’s tomb. Only one essay, the last in the volume, shifts away from Assisi and its saint to consider a Franciscan of the early trecento, Saint Louis of Toulouse. Cook has arranged the volume well, achieving a strong measure of cohesiveness and continuity among the essays. Studies of S. Francesco proceed according to location, moving up from the crypt, Francis’s burial-site of ca. 1230, to the façade of the upper church. Studies less directly concerned with the church of Assisi follow.

The two excellent opening essays of the book, by Donal Cooper and Janet Robson, are perfectly complementary. Each considers a different aspect of the history, structure, and cult of Francis’s tomb. The presence—or absence–of Francis’s body was of paramount importance for medieval pilgrims who sought the spiritual grace, intercession, and miracles of the holy man. Cooper’s title, “‘In loco tutissimo et firmissimo’” (“in the safest and most secure place”), quotes a thirteenth-century official eager to prove that the entire and intact body of Francis is, in fact, safely buried at Assisi. Yet the burial of Francis was from the beginning surrounded by scandal and somewhat mysterious circumstances. Moreover, within the church of S. Francesco, there was an extraordinary absence of visible tomb or relics—this, when elsewhere in Italy monumental sculpted tombs provided a clear focus for devotion, functioning as visible signs of the saint’s continued presence among the faithful. With meticulous scholarship, drawing on documentary, archaeological, and literary evidence, Cooper reconstructs the probable original appearance of the tomb and sealed tomb chamber, and the ensuing interventions undertaken in the late thirteenth century. While the original burial of Francis underneath the main altar of the lower church was intended to mimic that of early Christian martyrs, remodeling of the lower church sanctuary, begun ca. 1300, allowed closer access to the altar over the tomb and, by means of new decoration, an enhanced sense of the saint’s protective power and status as glorified alter Christus.

Robson’s essay also considers the architectural space around Francis’s tomb, its decoration, and the devotional needs and experiences of the medieval pilgrim. She focuses, however, not on the tomb itself but on the nearby chapels and transept of the lower church, opened to pilgrims after ca. 1300. Robson argues that these spaces did not simply provide spatial accommodation for pilgrims; on the contrary, the paintings encountered along the pilgrim’s path dramatically enhanced his or her spiritual journey. Robson uses what slight documentary evidence there is to full effect. But most importantly, her sensitive reading of the frescoes supports her reconstruction of the pilgrim’s route, demonstrating how repetitions and contrasts of figural pose, gesture, and theme were carefully planned in order to shape the pilgrim’s emotional response and rational understanding of key Franciscan messages. Throughout the sequence of frescoes, simple yet effective themes appealed to the pilgrim: the need for penitence, the negative value of despair, and the positive, guiding values of hope and faith in the saint’s healing powers.

The essays move from the lower church of Assisi to the upper with Marilyn Aronberg Lavin’s fine, provocative study of Cimabue’s cycle of the life of the Virgin in the apse of the upper church. Often ignored because of their woefully poor condition, these paintings, as Lavin observes, are of paramount importance in the history of Marian iconography. Lavin gives special attention to two scenes, the Assumption of the Virgin and Mary and Christ in Glory, and finds persuasive support for her interpretations in contemporary Franciscan thought, as articulated by the Minister General of the order, Saint Bonaventure. The Assumption, she argues, presents traditional love imagery from the Song of Songs with unprecedented and shocking explicitness. Her thesis is bound to be controversial: though hidden under her drapery, the Virgin’s leg placed over Christ’s thigh represents their spiritual union through an image of carnal intercourse. Without doubt, medieval artists and writers used sexual imagery inspired by the Song of Songs to suggest transcendent, mystical love. If, however, the relationship between Sponsa and Sponsus is portrayed as sexual intercourse, would not the dominant partner’s leg cross on top, as in the twelfth-century emblem of matrimony that Lavin uses to support her argument? Surely Mary is not pictured possessing her Son and Spouse. Another reading of Cimabue’s composition might emphasize its reversal of a familiar image, the Madonna and Child enthroned. Mary now sits on the lap of her heavenly Father. One meaning is not exclusive of the other; Mary is mother, child, and bride of Christ, as well as Ecclesia. The full range of meaning for the friars remains elusive, along with their response (would this imagery have been shocking?). Still, Lavin’s emphasis on loving relationship is fundamentally important. Any further research will need to take into account her bold interpretation.

Thomas de Wesselow bravely tackles the so-called “Assisi Problem,” the thorny question of attribution and chronology of the Legend of Saint Francis frescoed in the upper church. The essay begins with a helpful summary of the sometimes contentious scholarship on the subject, curiously omitting Hans Belting’s seminal monograph from the discussion. De Wesselow then clearly analyzes the spatial projection of the painted lamps and vaulted chambers at Assisi, comparing them to similar structures in Giotto’s Arena Chapel. He convincingly demonstrates that the enigmatic empty chambers painted on the chancel arch of the Arena Chapel are based on the same pattern that was used by the artist of Saint Francis Preaching Before Honorius III at Assisi. However, his conclusion, that the Arena Chapel precedes Assisi, is not as airtight as he claims. In discussing the hanging lamps, de Wesselow reasons that the more accurately drawn lamp must be the earliest, drawn from nature. In the Arena Chapel, however, the less accurately drawn vaulted chamber is assumed to be the earliest, its faults corrected in a later version. Might not the faulty lamp at Assisi also be earlier than the more successful lamp at the Arena Chapel? Although de Wesselow has admirably attempted to offer an unbiased, rational analysis, this example shows how difficult the task remains.

Three additional essays concern the basilica at Assisi. Daniel T. Michaels offers an intriguing interpretation of the façade. Even if not convincing in all details, his argument has merit, linking the imagery of the façade to apocalyptic prophesies from Ezekiel and Revelation. His approach is consistent with a Franciscan worldview in which Scripture was the foundation of meaning. Beth A. Mulvaney considers visual perception and devotion in medieval Franciscan art through a case-study of the Miracle at Greccio, painted in the nave of the upper church at Assisi. Implicitly, she links the development of a naturalistic, descriptive style in late thirteenth-century Italy to a devotional practice emphasized by Franciscan writers: vicarious participation in the life of Christ. Her references to liturgical drama (developed, with acknowledgment, from Dorothy Glass’s unpublished research) deserve further study. Ronald B. Herzman offers the only primarily literary essay in the volume, asking whether the pictorial imagery of S. Francesco had direct influence on Dante’s Commedia. His topic is intriguing; Dante was surely inspired by the Franciscan movement and, as Herzman writes, most likely visited the basilica at Assisi. Herzman’s suggested link between the lower church’s Allegory of Poverty and Dante’s vision of a wedding between Francis and Lady Poverty (Paradiso, Canto 11) raises unresolved questions of influence and meaning, as well as problems of chronology. Most promising are Herzman’s suggestive parallels between Franciscan thought and Dante’s concepts of pilgrimage, poverty, and reform of the church.

A long essay by Gregory W. Ahlquist and William R. Cook addresses the representation of Francis’s posthumous miracles, which were depicted with remarkable frequency on vita panels of the saint painted before ca. 1260. The authors trace the representations of these miracles, considering textual sources, as well as local and hypothetical oral traditions. They explain the emphasis on Francis’s posthumous miracles as Franciscan propaganda. Advertising the thaumaturgical powers of a man recently elevated to sainthood, these miracles proclaim Francis’s place within a tradition of holy men who, like Christ, heal lepers, the crippled, and those possessed by demons. Francis’s tomb appears as a site of special potency, encouraging pilgrimage to Assisi.

As the authors observe, once the order had achieved its huge international success, the cult-building imagery of miracles was no longer a priority. After ca. 1260, texts and pictorial cycles (including Bonaventure’s Major Life and the upper and lower naves of S. Francesco, Assisi) shift their focus from the posthumous miracles to Francis’s actual life, an exemplary biography to be imitated. Although the authors do not try to define imitation of the saint in thirteenth-century thought and practice—a complex topic beyond the scope of their study—hopefully, other scholars will investigate the role of the visual arts in encouraging and facilitating imitation of a saint who himself took medieval imitatio christi to a new level.

The book concludes with Nancy M. Thompson’s study of the stained-glass windows of two chapels at Santa Croce, Florence, each commissioned in the early fourteenth century by a member of one of Florence’s wealthiest banking families, the Bardi. By analyzing the chapels’ depictions of Saint Louis of Toulouse, who had renounced the Angevin crown to become a Franciscan friar, Thompson convincingly places the iconography of Louis in a context of political and religious tensions between the Bardi family and the friars of Santa Croce, themselves embroiled in conflict between spiritual and conventual factions of the order.

Overall, the volume is handsomely produced but stands in need of consistent editing. While many of the essays are well written, a few suffer from excesses of rhetorical verbiage; a few simply need to be better organized or more concise. Scholarly citations vary in form from essay to essay. Not all images discussed by the authors are illustrated, and the essay by Ahlquist and Cook would be easier to follow if references to figure numbers had been included in the text. One would hope for better quality color images in a high-priced book.

Nevertheless, this anthology will surely stimulate scholarship on the art of the Franciscan order. Its title promises a far broader range than could possibly be studied in nine essays. Besides the many other Franciscan monuments of Italy, large topics remain, such as a reassessment of the complex relationships between Franciscan and Byzantine art, for example, in regard to the Marian imagery of the upper church. Moreover, the very notion of what makes art “Franciscan” is in need of more precise definition. Should critical developments of thirteenth-century Italian art be associated with the Franciscan movement or are they better understood as reflections of broader cultural change? Although these topics are not addressed in The Art of the Franciscan Order in Italy, by clarifying important aspects of key Franciscan monuments, the book’s essays will significantly aid future scholarship.