This magnificent volume brings readers close to St. Francis of Assisi, the Franciscan community he founded, and the artistic revolution of Giotto, the great fourteenth-century Italian painter whose frescoes of Francis are now UNESCO World Heritage treasures. Francis, the Franciscans, Giotto, and Assisi itself are so thoroughly intertwined that understanding each alongside the others is essential for a full appreciation of this significant period. Francis of Assisi tells the story of this beloved figure?s life and of the early years of the order he founded. The Franciscan community did not develop around a fixed plan but instead grew around the person of Francis, who inspired countless people with his ideals and his example for how to live life. Alongside this period of Franciscan expansion the painter Giotto was evolving from child prodigy into a great artistic entrepreneur. The works that the greatest painter of the Middle Ages carried out for the order cover entire decades of his life, starting from when Giotto appears, young and revolutionary, in the upper basilica of Assisi, through to work in the two chapels of Santa Croce in Florence. These many years of activity are reconstructed, accompanied by the glorious images that have come to define this saint?s iconography.
