My thanks to an old friend, Mr Marlow Gazzoli, for sharing these pictures which he took during a recent visit to a chapel dedicated to St Francis of Assisi in the city of Masvingo in central Zimbabwe. It was built by Italian P.O.W.s who had been captured by the British during fighting in Africa during World War II, and brought to an internment camp in what was then the British colony of Rhodesia. (Masvingo was then known as Fort Victoria. According to some sources on the internet, the camp also housed a number of German, Austrian and Italian civilians who had been interned by the British as citizens of hostile powers.) The chapel was constructed from 1942-46; afterwards, two wings were added to house the remains of 71 Italian soldiers who died during their imprisonment. It is still maintained, with Mass celebrated on a regular basis, including an annual Mass on November 4th, Italian Armed Forced Day, for the repose of the men whose are buried there.
“Italy to her sons.”
All of the work around the altar, in the apse, and on the ceiling that appears to be mosaic is actually painted. This is more obvious in some of the pictures below where one can see that parts of the paint have fallen of the wall.
One of the three columbaria for the soldiers.
In the center of the ceiling of the nave, St Francis of Assisi, to whom the chapel is dedicated, is shown receiving the Stigmata.
The photographs in this post were all taken by Nicola de’ Grandi.
The Tuscan town of San Gimignano is named for St Geminianus, a bishop of Modena in the Italian region of the Emilia-Romagna, who died in 397. But it also has another patron Saint, one its own citizens, a girl named Fina (short for Serafina). Although her noble family had fallen into poverty, from a very young age, she would give half of her own food to those even less fortunate than herself, until she was struck by a disease of some sort that left her almost totally paralyzed. At the same time, her father died, leaving her and her mother in even more dire straights; her mother often had to leave her alone to look for work or beg. In the midst of severe suffering, Fina was never heard to complain, but prayed with her eyes always on a crucifix, “It is not my wounds but Thine, o Christ, that hurt me.” Finally, her mother died and she was left completely destitute, cared for only by two friends named Beldia and Bonaventura. Since she had heard that Pope St Gregory the Great also suffered terribly from various diseases, Fina would often pray to him that he would help her bear her sufferings. Eight days before her death, St Gregory appeared to her and told her that God would give her rest on his feast day, the day on which she died at the age of only 15, in the year 1253.
In 1468, the architects Benedetto and Giuliano da Maiano were brought to the Collegiate Church of the Assumption in San Gimignano to build a chapel dedicated to St Fina. Seven years later, Benedetto completed the altar which houses her relics, while the most successful artist in Florence at the time, Domenico Ghirlandaio (the future painting teacher of Michelangelo) was hired to fresco the walls and ceilings, which include two scenes from her life. The relics now repose underneath the altar...
but were formerly in this urn mounted on the wall above it. The poetic Latin inscription says, “The bones of a virgin lie hidden in the tomb which you see, friend; she is glory, model and defense for her own (i.e., for her fellow-citizens). Her name was Fina, this was her native place. Do you seek miracles? Read what the walls (i.e. the paintings on them) and the living signs have to teach.” (There is a spelling error in the 3rd line of the inscription, EVIT instead of FVIT.)
St Fina is not incorruptible (quite the contrary); her bones are now covered over with a wax effigy and a structure that supports the clothing. This new urn is designed so that her body can be carried in procession on her feast day.
During the years of her paralysis, Fina would often have to lie for long periods on this plank, to which (there is no polite way to explain this) she eventually became at least partly attached. Within the last couple of years, it has been placed in this new modern case with a sealed nitrogen atmosphere to preserve it, and is now displayed within the chapel.
On the right wall of the chapel, Ghirlandaio painted this image of the appearance of St Gregory to St Fina shortly before her death. (Renaissance artists in general, and particularly the Florentines, do not dwell on things that are ugly and distressing, and the artist does not show us Fina’s horrifying condition at the time of her death.)
Earlier this week, I posted Nicola’s photographs of the tomb of St Syrus, the first bishop of Pavia, a small town in northern Italy, located about 22 south of Milan; another one of the city’s churches, San Pietro in Ciel d’Oro, houses the relics of St Augustine and St Severinus, better known as the philosopher Boethius. A very late tradition has it that Syrus was the boy who offered to Our Lord the loaves and fishes which He multiplied, as recounted in the Gospel of St John, 6, 1-15. His tomb is located within the cathedral of Pavia, which is dedicated jointly to St Stephen the First-martyr and to the Assumption. This joint dedication arises from the fact that like Milan, Pavia originally had two separate cathedrals with these two separate titles, the larger of which, St Stephen, was used in the summer, and the smaller, St Mary, in the winter. In Milan, however, the two cathedral were completely separated from each other, and faced each other across a large open space, with a baptistery between them, whereas at Pavia, they stood next to each other, and were not wholly separated from each other internally.
The current single building results from a project to rebuild them as a single structure which began in the late 15th century, and is still technically not completed; the walls are solid, and the building functions, but the marble revetements that should have covered the exposed brickwork seen here has never been done. Construction was repeatedly halted not only because of the expense involved in procuring marble from a distance, since there is little to be had in the area, but also because of significant structural problems. The cupola, such as it stands, was not finished until 1882-85, the façade, still without revetement, in 1895-98, and the last phase, the two arms of the transept, in 1930-33.
The back of the apse and the belltower.
Even in its incomplete state, the building is impressively in its size. At nearly 320 feet externally (302 internally), the dome is the fourth highest in Italy, after those of St Peter’s basilica, the Pantheon, and the duomo of Florence.
The choir area behind the altar was the first part of the new cathedral to be completed, and for a long time, the only really usable part of it, to the point where serious thought was given to abandoning the project and returning to the use of the still-standing part of the old building.
On September 4th, the Italian city of Viterbo (roughly 50 miles to the north north-west of Rome) celebrates the feast of its patron Saint, a young woman named Rose who died in 1251 or ’52 at the age of only 17. The details of her life are poorly documented. In her time, Italy was wracked by political conflict between the Popes and the Holy Roman Emperors, and their factional supporters, known as the Guelfs (the papal side) and Ghibellines (the imperials.) This conflict is one of the most complicated aspects of all European history, and I could not even begin to explain it in a post such as this. Suffice it to say that Rose became famous when, at the age of only twelve, she began to rouse the people of her city to resist the Ghibelline occupation; so effectively, in fact, that she and her family were sent into exile.
Rose predicted the imminent death of the Emperor Frederick II in December of 1250, and with his passing, the Guelfs regained control of the city, and she was able to return. She now sought to enter the local Franciscan convent, but was refused either because of her poor health, or for lack of a dowry, or perhaps both. This may seem rather inappropriate for the Poor Clares, but they were still a very new movement (St Clare herself was still alive), and Viterbo was not a large or particularly rich city, so the sisters likely could ill afford a mouth to feed with no provisions at all. Rose is said to have replied to the abbess, “You will not have me now, but perhaps you will be more willing when I am dead.”
With the aid of her parish priest, she and a few other young women formed a small community of their own, but the nuns prevailed upon the Pope to order its suppression, since they had been granted the privilege of having no other women’s religious house near their own within a certain distance. (Petty clashes of this sort were all too common a feature of medieval religious life, alas.) Rose therefore returned to her parents’ house, and died shortly thereafter. The very same Pope who had ordered the suppression of her little community, Innocent IV (1243-54), ordered that the cause for her canonization be opened; it was brought to completion in 1457. On September 4, 1258, her mortal remains were translated from their original place of burial to the very same convent to which she had been refused entry as a religious, just as she herself had foretold.
The shrine of St Rose in Viterbo, with the previous “macchina” (explained below), in front of it. After decades of more modern looking towers, the current designer, Raffaele Ascenzi, has made a happy return to the Gothic style that prevailed in the 19th century. The church’s very dull façade is the result of a particularly unfortunate neo-classical renovation done in 1850... our own is not the first generation of barbarians. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by LucaFernandi, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Although the day of her death was March 6, Viterbo keeps her feast on the anniversary of this translation. Since time out of mind, it has been the city’s custom to mark the day by building a tower with an image of the Saint at or near the top, and carrying it through the streets and piazzas, following the route of the original translation. Over the centuries, as new towers have been commissioned, they have grown to the extraordinary height of nearly 100 feet, and weight of over 5½ tons, requiring 100 men or more to carry them. As may be imagined, the procession of the “macchina”, as it is called in Italian, has seen some unfortunate incidents, and some rather comical failures. In 1790, the macchina collapsed, and in 1814, a different one fell backwards, and a few of the men carrying it were killed. In 1967, a newly designed one (pictured right), commissioned too late in the year for its materials to be properly tested (ah, Italy...), got rained on, making it too heavy for the porters to finish the route. It was repaired, however, and used for 12 years.
Since 1952, the macchine have been given names. A new one, scheduled to be used until 2028 inclusively, debuted yesterday, and is called “Dies natalis”, Latin for “birthday”. This is also the technical term used very often in the Martyrology, and many other Christian documents before it, for the day on which a Saint dies, and is therefore “born” into eternal life. It is difficult to think why this name was chosen, since Rose’s feast is not actually celebrated on her dies natalis. Here are two videos of it being carried for the very first time; in the first, it departs from the place where it was built, and in the second, it arrives at the piazza in front of the church were the relics are kept. Evviva Santa Rosa!
Last month, we published pictures of the basilica of St Simplician in Milan, which houses the relics of Ss Sisinnius, Martyrius and Alexander, a group missionaries who were martyred at Anaunia, north of Trent, where they had been sent by St Ambrose at the behest of St Vigilius, the bishop of Trent. Today is the feast of Vigilius himself, who followed in their footsteps, and was also martyred while preaching to the pagans, in the year 405. The cathedral of Trent is dedicated to him, and is of course is also famous as the site of the great ecumenical council of the 16th century. Here are some photos taken by Nicola de’ Grandi.
The church was begun in the year 1212 at the initiative of bishop Federico Vanga, under the architect Adamo D’Arogno, to replace a much older structure. The Romanesque façade was meant to be seen up close, since the piazza in front of it was quite small until the 19th century. The original plan was to have a bell-tower on either side, but only one was completed; in the 18th century, it was capped with an onion dome of the kind seen all over the Adige valley. (In point of fact, this architectural form, which is thought of as typically Russian, was introduced into that country by Italian and German architects during the great Westernization movement of Tsar Peter I.)
The north side of the church, with a rose-window designed to represent the Wheel of Fortune, and the bishop’s palace behind the church (to the left in this photo).
The “bishops’ door”, which they would use to enter the church for major ceremonies, made in the 16th century with several pieces reused from an earlier version: the image of St Vigilus above the door, the two lions on which the front columns rest, and the lunette above the door with Christ the Pantocrator and the symbols of the Four Evangelists.
In yesterday’s post about Saints Catherine of Siena and Francis of Assisi being made the patron Saints of Italy, I explained a bit about the state of cold war that existed between the Papacy and the kingdom of Italy in the period of the so-called Risorgimento, and how the Popes from 1870 until 1929 were confined to the Vatican. A friend then brought to my attention this video from the always-interesting YouTube channel Caeremoniale Romanum, a British Pathé newsreel, which shows Pius XI going to the Lateran basilica for the first time in his papacy, to celebrate the feast of the Ascension in 1933.
Our friend Fr Joseph Koczera, SJ, also shared with us this picture of an inscription (written in a very elevated and formal style of classical Latin) in the basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, which commemorates the visit of Pope Pius XII during which he solemnly proclaimed Ss Catherine and Francis to be the patrons of Italy. (The church is called “sopra Minerva – over Minerva” because it was built on the site of a Roman temple.)
“On May 5 in the year 1940, Pius XII, shining forth in the majesty of the papacy, entered this church, was present for a solemn Mass, commended the Italian people to the heavenly patrons Francis and Catherine, and paid outstanding tributes to them both from the pulpit; going into the neighboring buildings (i.e. the Dominican house), together with the leaders of the city, he gladdened the Dominican and Franciscan families with his appearance and speech; in the piazza of the Minerva, he graced the celebrating crowd with an auspicious prayer. The Dominican friars set up (this inscription) for the memory of posterity.”
When an American pilgrim visits the ancient cities of Italy today, he may easily fail to realize that his own country is older than the modern state of Italy by nearly a century. From the fall of the Roman Empire until the mid-19th century, the Italian peninsula was divided into many countries, of varying size and importance, and the Pope himself ruled a fairly large one, with Rome as its capital. This country, variously called the Papal State or States of the Church, was the last to be conquered, in 1870, by the north Italian kingdom of Savoy, the consummation of the movement known as the “Risorgimento.” Perhaps even less well known today are the fiercely anticlerical character of the Savoyard government, and the long state of cold war that existed between it and the Church after the fall of the Papal State. For nearly 60 years, in fact, neither would officially recognize the other, and for much of that period, Catholics were forbidden under pain of excommunication from participating in the public life of Italy.
This unhappy situation was ended by the Lateran Pacts of 1929, whereby the Church formally recognized the Kingdom of Italy, which in turn recognized the sovereignty of the Pope over a tiny fraction of his former domains, the modern State of Vatican City. It was not however Pius XI, the Pope then reigning, who gave to modern Italy Saints Francis of Assisi and Catherine of Siena as her Patron Saints, but rather his successor, Pius XII. His decree to that effect was issued less than 3 months before the war that came after the War to End All Wars; prescient perhaps of the new catastrophe awaiting the peoples of Europe, including the Italians, Pope Pius writes of his choices:
Francis, poor and humble, truly the image of Jesus Christ, gave unlimited examples of the life of the Gospel to the very turbulent men of his age, and by establishing his three orders, opened to them a swift way towards the correction of morals both private and public, and to the true sense of the Catholic faith. In the same way did the most vigorous and devout virgin Catherine effectively work to encourage and establish harmony between the cities and towns of her land … (Licet commissa nobis, June 18, 1939.)
In this video, we see Pope Pius’ visit to the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, where the body of St Catherine rests under the high altar, shortly after the proclamation of the new Patron Saints. It is very much in the style of its times, and sadly rather blurry, but documents a truly moving display of popular devotion. In the second half, we hear the music of the Capella Sistina, directed by Lorenzo Perosi, (again, very much in the style of its times), followed by the voice of the Pope himself, as he calls Saint Catherine “Mother of her people, Angel of Peace,” and prays that she and Francis will protect Italy and lead her to God.
I have long thought that the choice of Francis and Catherine as joint Patrons of Italy was a particularly inspired one on the part of Pius XII, not only for their individual importance as Saints, but also as representatives of two religious orders whose impact on the fortunes of nearly every Italian city can hardly be overstated. A great part of the history of the Renaissance in particular is the history of the Franciscans and Dominicans, and of their patrons and parishioners, commissioning art works for their innumerable churches. Today, the Renaissance is too frequently spoken of as it were solely a Florentine affair, and the vital role of the Franciscans within it too easily forgotten. Much of the inspiration for the art of that period comes from St Francis and his love of creation, not for its own sake, but inasmuch as he saw every part of it as an expression of God’s love and mercy.
It was this that lead Franciscans scientists and others associated with the Order, (Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon are the most famous examples), to investigate how light, the beginning of creation, enables us to see and know the rest of it; and this in turn lead to the rediscovery of perspective in painting. Likewise, St Francis’ love for and interest in the created order also inspired the search for a more realistic depiction of it, leading Italian painting away from the hieratic styles of the low Middle Ages. It is not a coincidence that so much of the great Italian art of the 14th and 15th centuries is found in churches built by Franciscans, from the Basilica of St Francis in Assisi to the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Nor is it mere chance that one of the greatest Italian painters of all time, Fra Angelico, was a Dominican friar.
Of the innumerable images of St Francis in the basilica in Assisi, surely one of the most beautiful is the so-called Sunset Madonna, by Pietro Lorenzetti. This is a fresco on a west-facing wall in the left transept of the lower church; it is called “the Sunset Madonna” because there is a window directly opposite it, through which the rays of the setting sun illuminate it for about an hour at the end of each day. The fresco was painted around 1320 above an altar (now removed) dedicated to St John the Evangelist, who is seen on the right side. One of the donors is depicted beneath him, in prayer before a Crucifix, and his wife was probably in the part now missing on the left side; the donor may very well have been named John, which was also St Francis’ baptismal name.
The traditional story about the arrangement of the remaining figures is that the Christ Child is asking his Mother, “Which of My Saints loves Me the most?”, to which the Madonna answers by pointing at St Francis, as if to say “He does.”
Today is the feast of St John Bosco, who is well known as the founder of the Salesian Order, and as one of the great pioneers in modern Catholic education. Something about him which perhaps many English-speakers are less aware of is that he lived in a period in which the government of the state he came from, the kingdom of Savoy in north-western Italy, was extremely hostile to the Church. As it conquered one part of the Italian peninsula after another over the mid-19th century, (the political movement known as the “Risorgimento”), it would rob the Church in each region blind, suppressing religious orders, and forcing the closure of countless Catholic schools, hospitals, orphanages and cultural institutions, to say nothing of the churches themselves. Finally, in 1870, it conquered and despoiled the Papal state, at which the Popes became, in the phrase of the day, “prisoners in the Vatican”, refusing to cooperate with the robber-state’s illegal occupation of their country by setting foot within it. The Matins lessons for Don Bosco refer to this state of affairs when they say that he “more than once he helped the Roman Pontiff to temper the evils which derived from laws passed against the Church at that time.”
In 1922, the same year that Pius XI was elected, the Italian Fascists led by Benito Mussolini came to power, and although they would do many terrible things over the next 23 years, it cannot be denied that they also did some good things. One of these was to recognize that the state of cold war which existed between the Church and the Italian state was harmful to both, and needed to end. Not long after coming to power, Mussolini agreed to open negotiations to settle the Church’s legal status, and compensate it for the vast theft which Italy had perpetrated against it. The resulting treaties were signed by representatives of the Church and the Italian kingdom on February 11, 1929; they are known as the Lateran Treaties, since the signing ceremony was held in the papal palace next to the Lateran Basilica.
Don Bosco was the very first person to be beatified after the Lateran treaties went into effect, on June 2 of that same year. (This day is, ironically, now the July 4th of the modern Republic of Italy, the anniversary of the constitutional referendum of 1946 that turfed out the Savoiard monarchy, after the king’s appalling performance during World War 2.) Of course, the Lateran treaties did not magically erase all the tension between the Church and state, but this beatification was very much a celebration not only of a great Saint, but of the restoration of some measure of peace to a society long torn by serious internal strife.
Don Bosco was canonized 5 years later, on April 1, Easter Sunday of 1934. Here are two pieces of footage (without commentary) from the time of the canonization, from the archives of the Italian newsreel company Luce. The first shows events surrounding the canonization at St Peter’s in Rome, and the second, a procession in the city of Turin, where he is buried.
February 14th is of course known throughout the world as St Valentine’s day, and in the post-Conciliar calendar, is celebrated liturgically as the feast of Ss Cyril and Methodius, the evangelizers of the Slavs, since the former died on this day in the year 869. However, the southern Italian city of Sorrento, on the bay of Naples, keeps the day as the feast of its patron Saint, the abbot Antoninus.
A statue of St Antoninus in the piazza in front of his basilica in Sorrento. One of the miracles attributed to him is the rescue of a child that had been swallowed by a whale or sea-monster, but was recovered safe and sound from the creature’s belly through the prayers of the Saint. The sea-monster is here seen under his foot, copied from representations of such creatures on ancient Roman sarcophagi.
He was born near Ancona in the later part of the eighth century, and early in life became a monk in one of the many dependent houses of Monte Cassino. The Italian peninsula was wracked by endless wars and chaos in that era, which drove Antoninus to leave his monastery and migrate to Castellamare, a town at the beginning of the peninsula of Sorrento, where he became fast friends with the local bishop, St Catellus. An oratory which the two of them founded on nearby Monte Faito in honor of St Michael the Archangel (who has a special fondness for southern Italy) after receiving a vision of him there is still visited by pilgrims to this day. For a time, Antoninus lived at this oratory, but later, at the insistent invitation of the citizens of Sorrento, left his solitary life and entered a monastery in the city, later to become its abbot.
The story is told that shortly before his death in the year 830, Antoninus said that he wished to be buried neither inside nor outside the city wall, and was therefore buried within the wall itself. Not long after, the city was besieged by the Duke of Benevento, and his attempts to knock down the section of wall near the Saint’s tomb with battering rams completely failed. The Saint then appeared to him in a dream and not only rebuked him, but administered to him a severe beating; on waking, the duke was not only covered in bruises, but learned that his daughter had been possessed by a devil at the very moment when he had begun his attack on the city. This led him to abandon the siege and pray to the Saint for the healing of daughter, which was granted. Twice in the 14th century, Sorrento was besieged by the Saracens; the successful defense of the city on both occasions was attributed to the St Antoninus’ intercession, and he is therefore honored as the city’s principal heavenly Patron.
An oratory dedicated to him was constructed close to the place of his burial in the 9th century, and transformed into a much larger basilica in the 11th; this latter was entrusted to the Theatine Order in 1608, who extensively rebuilt it in the decoratively rich Neapolitan Baroque style. Staircases to either side of the main sanctuary lead down to the crypt where the Saint’s relics are kept.
Looking from the staircase back up into the basilica.
Ex votos thanking St Antoninus for his intervention in saving ships from being wrecked, attached to the wall of the crypt. Sorrento is fairly small, but has a good port which is quite busy, home to a lot of fishing boats; the bay of Naples can be especially turbulent in the winter months.
Since we are within the octave of the Assumption, today we interrupt our series of Nicola’s photos of Ravenna for those of a very beautiful Gothic church dedicated to the Assumption. This is in the city of Bozen (“Bolzano” in Italian), the capital of the region known as South Tyrol (Südtirol) to Germans, and the Upper Adige (Alto-Adige) to Italians. Before the end of World War I, it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and German speakers are still the majority (62%) of the population; the cultural and artistic influences of the German world are very strong in this area, and with no other information, one might well guess that this church was in Austrian or Bavaria. Last year, we published his photos of another church dedicated to the Assumption in Brixen (Bressanone), about 25 miles to the northeast of Bozen.
It was originally built as a parish around 1300 to replace an earlier Romanesque building, and completed with the addition of the belltower a bit over 200 years later. In 1944, it was severely damaged during an air-raid, and the stained-glass windows, wall frescoes and main altarpiece were all destroyed. What we see today is therefore the result of a lengthy and painstaking restoration project, which I dare say was extremely successful. In 1964, the diocese of Brixen was renamed Bozen-Brixen, and the church was elevated to the status of co-cathedral and residence of the bishop, although the cathedral chapter remains in Brixen.
As is the case with many churches in Italy, and more generally, with those built over long periods of time, the building is not entirely uniform in style. The solidity of the façade and the walls of the nave is greater than those of the apse, more like the Romanesque.
The bell-tower, on the other hand, which was constructed rather later, in the first two decades of the 16th-century, is thoroughly Gothic, and stands at over 213 feet high.
We conclude this series on the Collegiate Church of the Assumption in San Gimignano, Italy, with items from the church’s musuem, predominantly a very beautiful collection of sacred vestsments from the 16th-18th centuries. Thanks once again to our Ambrosian writer Nicola de’ Grandi for sharing these with us. For the previous posts in this series, see the following links: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5.
Crucifix by an unknown Tuscan artist, mid-13th century. As is typical before the later decades of the same century, Christ’s divinity is emphasized by showing Him on the Cross fully clothed, awake, and upright, the creator and sustainer of the world even in the midst of His Passion.
Altar frontal of St Catherine of Alexandria, Tuscan; mid-16th century; red velvet with embroidery in silk and metallic threads.
Cope in grey silk and brocade; Italian, 18th-century.
As we have seen in the previous posts in this series (part 1; part 2; part 3; part 4), the Collegiate Church of the Assumption in San Gimignano, Italy, has preserved a really unusual amount of high quality fresco on the walls of its side aisles, and in the chapel dedicated to the city’s patron Saint Fina. It is also home to two of the most remarkably well-preserved wooden religious sculptures of the Italian Renaissance, the works of a sculptor named Jacopo della Quercia (1374 ca. - 1438), who came to San Gimignano to do them around the year 1421; they were painted by Martino di Bartolommeo in 1426. It is almost unheard-of for wooden statues from this period to survive without getting broken AND without losing any of their original paint. As mentioned previously, the feast of the Annunciation was kept as New Year’s Day in Tuscany until the mid-18th century, and was the day on which a communal baptismal ceremony was held for all of the healthy children born within the previous year. These sculptures, of the Angel Gabriel (with Jacopo’s signature on the base) and the Virgin Mary (with Martino’s on the base), were probably intended to be carried in a procession on the feast, leading up to the baptismal rite. Jacopo della Quercia is one of the very few sculptors who worked equally well in wood, marble and bronze, and an important figure in the passage from the highly stylized figures of the Gothic period to the more naturalistic works of the Italian Renaissance. We see this particularly well here in the pose of the Virgin Mary, as the artist captures the moment when the Angel speaks to Her and says “Fear not!” (All photos by Nicola de’ Grandi.)
The sculptures stand on ledges to either side of a fresco of the martyrdom of St Sebastian, commissioned in 1465 after an outbreak of the plague from Benozzo Gozzoli, who also did the Virgin of the Assumption seen behind the statue of the Angel Gabriel, and the image of St Anthony the Abbot behind the statue of the Virgin.
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