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Umbrian, active 1260s and 1270s
Borgo Crucifix Master
Copy-and-paste citation text:
Miklós Boskovits (1935–2011), “Master of the Franciscan Crucifixes,” NGA Online Editions, https://purl.org/nga/collection/constituent/1693 (accessed December 10, 2024).
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In 1922, Osvald Sirén coined the conventional name for the painter, presumably Umbrian by origin and training. The Swedish art historian was the first to recognize the common authorship of a painted crucifix now in the Treasury of the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi, two paintings of the same subject in Bologna, and the fragments
The anonymous painter was probably trained in Assisi around 1255 – 1265, under the influence of such artists as the Master of Santa Chiara, author of the great painted crucifix in the church of Santa Chiara in the Umbrian town, datable to c. 1260,[6] and the
[1] Osvald Sirén, Toskanische Maler im xiii. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1922), 219 – 225. In proposing the name of Meister der Franziskaner-Kruzifixe, Sirén defined the figurative culture from which the artist sprang as Umbro-Pisan.
[2] Evelyn Sandberg-Vavalà excluded from her regrouping one of the crucifixes of San Francesco at Bologna, which she thought unclassifiable on account of its extensive overpainting, but she associated the portable cross in Smith College at Northampton, Massachusetts, with the paintings thus far included in the group. Eschewing the conventional name introduced by Sirén, Sandberg-Vavalà argued that the anonymous artist was Bolognese in origin and had gone to Assisi to work but later returned to his hometown. See Evelyn Sandberg-Vavalà, La croce dipinta italiana e l’iconografia della Passione (Verona, 1929), 844 – 858.
[3] As Edward Garrison noted (1949), the only element alien to the catalog assembled by Evelyn Sandberg-Vavalà is the crucifix in the Collezioni Comunali in Bologna; Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949), 208.
[4] Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949), 13 (Blue Crucifix Master), 14 (Borgo Crucifix Master), 208, 209, 211 (Bolognese anonymous works), and 213 (Umbrian anonymous work); and subsequently by various other scholars.
[5] Miklós Boskovits (2000) emphasized that Santa Maria in Borgo was not the original site of the painted crucifix now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna and that the blue pigment used in painted crucifixes was a very widespread iconographic tradition in the thirteenth century. See Miklós Boskovits, in Duecento: Forme e colori del Medioevo a Bologna, ed. Massimo Medica and Stefano Tumidei (Venice, 2000), 186. See also Silvia Giorgi, in Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna, catalogo generale, vol. 1, Dal Duecento a Francesco Francia, ed. Jadranka Bentini, Gian Piero Cammarota, and Daniela Scaglietti Kelescian (Venice, 2004), 41 – 44; Anna Tambini, Storia delle arti figurative a Faenza, vol. 1, Le origini (Faenza, 2006), 74 – 82.
[6] See Elvio Lunghi, “Maestro di Santa Chiara,” in La Pittura in Italia: Il Duecento e il Trecento, ed. Enrico Castelnuovo, 2 vols. (Milan, 1986), 2:610 – 611.
[7] See Elvio Lunghi, “Maestro di San Francesco,” in La Pittura in Italia: Il Duecento e il Trecento, ed. Enrico Castelnuovo, 2 vols. (Milan, 1986), 2:624 – 625; for the artist’s designs for stained glass, see Frank Martin and Gerhard Ruf, Die Glasmalereien von San Francesco in Assisi: Entstehung und Entwicklung einer Gattung in Italien (Regensburg, 1997), 53 – 78.
[8] See Giordana Benazzi, in Dipinti, sculture e ceramiche della Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria: Studi e restauri, ed. Caterina Bon Valsassina and Vittoria Garibaldi (Florence, 1994), 66 – 67.
[9] See Miklós Boskovits, in Duecento: Forme e colori del Medioevo a Bologna, ed. Massimo Medica and Stefano Tumidei (Venice, 2000), 196 – 197; Massimo Medica, “La città dei libri e dei miniatori,” in Duecento: Forme e colori del Medioevo a Bologna, ed. Massimo Medica and Stefano Tumidei (Venice, 2000), 125.
Miklós Boskovits (1935–2011)
March 21, 2016