San Francesco

▪ monastery and church, Assisi, Italy

      Franciscan monastery and church in Assisi, Italy, begun after the canonization in 1228 of St. Francis of Assisi (Francis of Assisi, Saint) and completed in 1253. The crypt was added in 1818, when the tomb of St. Francis was opened. The lower church is where the saint is buried, and it has frescoes by Giunta Pisano, Cimabue, Giotto (Giotto di Bondone), Pietro Lorenzetti (Lorenzetti, Pietro), Simone Martini (Martini, Simone), and Andrea da Bologna. The upper church has frescoes representing stories of the life of St. Francis by Giotto and his followers, as well as wall paintings of Old and New Testament scenes by Cimabue, Pietro Cavallini (Cavallini, Pietro), and Jacopo Torriti.

 On Sept. 26, 1997, a major earthquake shattered the ceiling, raining tons of debris into the sanctuary and fragmenting the frescoes into hundreds of thousands of pieces. (Four people were killed in the church.) Some of the artwork had been restored by 1999, when the church was reopened, and further reconstructions were complete in 2002. But Cimabue's St. Matthew fresco was only 25 percent restorable, and the reconstruction work came to an end in 2006.

 

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