Word: italian
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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This was the worst catastrophe to afflict the fragile patrimony of Italian art history since the 1966 flood in Florence, but the Italian church and civil authorities rashly promised to have the basilica restored and open to the public again in time for Christmas 1999. The restoration cost was estimated at $60 million--the price, more or less, of a single Van Gogh, but not easy to raise. The aim of this show, then, is to remind the public of the Assisi disaster and of the urgency of its repair...
...illuminated manuscripts from Louis IX, King of France (and later a saint himself); sumptuous tokens from the rulers of England, Germany and Spain, as well as the various lay and ecclesiastical bigwigs of Italy and the successive Popes themselves. The last person to leave a big gift of medieval Italian art to San Francesco was, oddly enough, a 20th century American who died in 1955--the collector-dealer Frederick Mason Perkins, a friend of Bernard Berenson...
...through June 27 and then move to San Francisco, appropriately enough, for the summer--has some exceptional things in it. Perhaps the finest of its paintings, and the most exuberantly fresh in its coloring, is a portion of what must have been one of the great 13th century Italian altarpieces. It is the work of an unidentified Umbrian artist known only as the Master of St. Francis, and it shows a decided breakaway from Byzantine conventions in the modeling of its figures. In its scene of Christ's deposition from the Cross, the figure of the Saviour bends into...
...panel depicting a tonsured, hollow-cheeked and rather minatory St. Francis, holding a cross and an open New Testament and exhibiting the stigmata on his hands and feet, standing ramrod-straight and flanked by four scenes of his posthumous miracles. It was done by an unknown artist, either an Italian or a Byzantine Greek, in the second third of the 13th century. It looks stiff and archaic, yet the painter has infused a remarkable energy into some of its details, such as the calligraphic loops on the blue robe of a madwoman from whose mouth an exorcised devil is escaping...
Other recipients will pursue a range of interests: Pries plans to study urban design in Rome and other Italian cities, Krohn will explore the literary and musical culture of Ireland and Soffer will embark on a world-wide expedition to explore key moments in geological history...