The Legacy of Saint Francis
When Saint Francis died in 1226, at the age of forty-four, he was already renowned throughout Christendom, and his movement, formally established as a religious Order in 1223, counted thousands of followers. The need was immediately felt to build a basilica that would preserve his remains, express his significance to the faithful of the time, and perpetuate his memory. Thus, on 15 July 1228, Pope Gregory IX, a personal friend of Saint Francis, declared him a saint and simultaneously laid the first stone of the basilica on the hill just outside the northern walls of Assisi. Only seven years later, in 1235, the building, comprising two superimposed churches and the large bell tower, was essentially completed in the form in which we still see it today. The Basilica of St Francis is undoubtedly among the most famous and visited churches in the world: it combines the profound spiritual significance associated with the saint with exceptional historical and artistic value.
The Artistic Value of the Basilica di San Francesco
It was decided that the vitality and freshness brought by Saint Francis to the Church should be expressed through the new architectural style developed in the twelfth century for the great French cathedrals: the Gothic style. The Basilica di San Francesco in Assisi, particularly the Basilica Superiore, is in fact among the earliest examples of Italian Gothic architecture. The stained-glass windows of the apse and transept, illustrating sacred stories, are the oldest in Italy and were created by craftsmen brought specifically from beyond the Alps.
However, while the building’s architectural quality is remarkable, it is above all the history of its painted decoration that makes the Basilica di San Francesco a marvel of universal art.
The Great Artists in the Basilica di San Francesco
Within just a few decades, between the second half of the thirteenth century to the early years of the fourteenth, the decorative works at Assisi involved the earliest great masters of Italian painting. Faced with the task of conveying the message of Saint Francis, they understood that expressing his spirituality required the development of a new artistic language. Among these artists are Jacopo Torriti, Cimabue, Simone Martini and Pietro Lorenzetti, yet the name most closely associated with Assisi is undoubtedly that of the Florentine painter Giotto di Bondone. According to tradition, it was Giotto who, at the end of the thirteenth century, created the most important cycle: the stories of the life of Saint Francis along the nave walls of the Basilica Superiore. These paintings established a perpetual visual narration of the saint’s life and marked the definitive decline of Byzantine art in the West, giving way to the new Italian artistic language that would flourish in the Renaissance. It should also be recalled that Giotto returned to Assisi in the early fourteenth century to fresco the Chapel of Mary Magdalene in the Basilica Inferiore: these paintings, counted among his masterpieces, have recently been restored and have regained their original splendour.
The presence in Assisi of works by Giotto and the other great painters deeply influenced local artists, giving rise to the so-called Umbrian school.
The Basilica Superiore: the “workshop of Utopia”
In describing the unparalleled artistic heritage of the Basilica di San Francesco, special attention must be given to the restoration of the frescoes on the three vaults of the ceiling of the Basilica Superiore, which collapsed during the 1997 earthquake. After reconstructing the masonry, Italian restorers succeeded in re-integrating much of the coloured fragments salvaged from the rubble. It was like reassembling a gigantic puzzle, an operation made possible through pioneering digital technologies applied to Medieval art. The operation was aptly described as “the workshop of utopia”, because when it was first proposed many believed it impossible to achieve.
The Route through the Basilica
A visit to the Basilica di San Francesco begins in the Basilica Inferiore, entirely covered with paintings, though only dimly lit by natural light. Halfway down the nave, one finds the stairway descending to the crypt, excavated in the nineteenth century to allow pilgrims to view the tomb of Saint Francis. At the end of the transept, magnificently enlivened by the frescoes of Pietro Lorenzetti and other Giottesque painters, are the stairs that lead to the terrace of the Sacro Convento cloister, built behind the basilica to house the community of friars. From the terrace one ascends to the Basilica Superiore, where the coloured light filtering through the stained-glass windows of the large Gothic openings, together with the chromatic interplay of the frescoes covering walls and ceiling, creates an atmosphere of great enchantment, one uniquely capable of giving visual expression to the central line of the Cantico delle Creature: “Laudato si’, mi’ Signore, cum tucte le tue creature…” (Canticle of the Creatures, “Praise be to you, my Lord, with all your creatures…”).
