To celebrate the figure of Saint Francis eight hundred years after his death in Assisi on October 3, 1226, the Episcopal Conference of the Marche (CEM), together with the thirteen dioceses of the Marche and the Marche Region, have agreed on a series of events, all centered on the figure of the Saint, but each approached from a different perspective. Our diocese is offering a small exhibition that focuses not specifically on the figure of Saint Francis, but rather on Saint Francis through the spiritual message he conveyed to the communities and individuals who followed his path. The exhibition, which features only three works, but of great religious and historical-artistic significance, opens with a precious staurotheca (from the Franciscan Convent of Cossignano), one of many that Pope Nicholas IV (1227-1292), a Franciscan native of Ascoli Piceno, donated to the convents of the Franciscan communities in his homeland. A great patron of the arts, he commissioned extraordinary ...
Oil on panel Provenance: San Benedetto del Tronto (AP) Costantini Brancadoro Collection The painting is an unpublished work by the Florentine painter Jacopino del Conte, a leading exponent of the second phase of Mannerism known as the "Grande Maniera." Jacopino trained in the workshop of Andrea del Sarto, alongside artists such as Francesco Salviati, with whom he shared a move to Rome and the fresco decoration of the Oratory of San Giovanni Decollato (ca. 1536-1541). This proves that the painting in question is unequivocally by Jacopino. In fact, the panel reproduces the central section of the fresco with the Baptism of Christ, dated 1541. The figure of Jesus is literally derived from the Roman fresco, as if the same material had been used. cartoon, only in reverse, and the pose of the Baptist is the same, simply reversed. Other similarities are found in the landscape setting and especially in the pose of one of the witnesses to the scene, with his gaze equally ...