Appendix—
The Frescoes in the Choir of San Francesco

Julian Gardner

The frescoes of the legend of Saint Francis in the choir of San Francesco at Rieti have only recently attracted the sustained attention of art historians, although they have been known for a considerable period.^[1] The fragmentary cycle now occupies a single register running round the choir chapel (plate 32 and figure 1). The aim of this discussion is to set out very briefly the problems posed by the Rieti frescoes rather than to propose definitive solutions.

According to tradition it was during his second visit to Rieti in 1210 that Saint Francis occupied the small oratory of Santa Croce.^[2] The present church was begun toward the middle of the thirteenth century. On 15 September 1245 Innocent IV granted an indulgence of forty days to all who assisted the construction of a Franciscan convent at Rieti, which, it appears, had already been begun.^[3] This indulgence was renewed three years later, on 20 May 1248.^[4] In 1289 the friars bought a piece of land from the canons of Sant'Angelo.^[5] The low-lying site beside the Velino was prone to flooding, and an inundation is recorded in 1263.^[6] A particularly disastrous flood in 1634 prompted the raising of the church floor, damaging the frescoes in the process.^[7] Although they must still have been visible in the fifteenth century, to judge from the sequence and placement of the Quattrocento frescoes in relation to the older stratum, the cycle of Franciscan scenes is not mentioned in the sources.^[8] Even after the collapse of the vault during the severe earthquake of 1898 they do not seem to have come to light. Shortly before 1954 they were restored by the Soprintendenza ai Monumenti.^[9]

The cycle is badly damaged, and the still recognizable scenes are the

following: (1) the Dream of Pope Innocent III, (2) the Miracle at Greccio, (3) the Vision of the Chariot, (4) the Vision of the Throne. To the right of the east window the series is interrupted by a preexisting votive fresco of the Madonna and Saints Peter and Paul. The cycle continues on the south wall of the choir with (5) the Healing of the Knight of Lerida, (6) the Freeing of the Heretic. The last scene on this wall is lost. Apart from the Franciscan scenes a number of somewhat mediocre Quattrocento frescoes survives in the choir.

Beneath the cycle of Franciscan narratives is a basamento of fictive illusionistic mosaic pierced by hexagonal openings within which are set busts of angels. In the two central hexagons of the west wall the angels wear pallia and hold censers.^[10] The raising of the choir floor in the seventeenth century has brought these angels unnaturally close to the ground, and this alteration has also minimized the calculated viewing point of the framing of the Franciscan scenes.^[11] The scenes themselves begin approximately 130 cm above the present floor level. At least part of the damage done to the scenes appears to have been caused by the subsequent insertion of the choir stalls.

Architecturally the choir is a simple rectangular space, approximately 9.3 meters square. Parts of the original vault responds survive, cut back below capital level, presumably at the time of the insertion of the baroque vault.^[12] A large gothic east window, its tracery now substantially in restored, provides the only source of light. In their main lines both choir and transept very probably go back to the middle of the thirteenth century.

A considerable amount of reconstruction in the mind's eye is necessary for a proper understanding of the Franciscan scenes. The upper parts of all the surviving narratives are lost. It may be that we owe the preservation of the surviving fragments to the protection of the later choir stalls. Whether there was a second, upper register of scenes is uncertain and will be considered presently, but the basamento proves that the remaining scenes constituted the original bottom level. The plaster joins (giornate ) of the basamento cornice molding overlap the borders of the scenes, demonstrating that the normal painting process in fresco of working from the top downwards was followed at Rieti.^[13]

Some further technical observations may be made. On the north side of the choir (at least where plaster overlaps are visible), it is evident that the framing elements between the scenes were painted first and the intervening scenes thereafter. This painting sequence has been noted on the triumphal arch of the Scrovegni Chapel at Padua of circa 1305,

and (at least partially) in the Saint Francis legend in the Upper Church at Assisi.^[14] The bases of the fictive columns which frame the narratives are decorated with a strip of fictive Cosmati work. These columns, which differ in detail, are set against a dark blue "void": a pair of thin white lines separated by a broader band of red earth forms the borders of the scenes themselves. All the halos project slightly from the surface of the wall and their rays were indented with a stick, a common practice at the time. The basic measurements of the frescoes appear to have been calculated in braccie .^[15] A good deal of the upper layer of paint has flaked away. Some minute fragments of siccative filling survive in the basamento. The votive fresco to the right of the window is earlier than the fresco layers at either side, as is proved by the sequence of plaster overlaps, and it would appear to have been purposely preserved by the designer of the cycle of Franciscan narratives, perhaps at the wish of the donor who kneels to the left of the Virgin. The east window is taken, not always consistently, as the source of light in the cycle, illuminating the forms from right to left on the north wall, and from left to right on the south. This convention had been found earlier in Giotto's frescoes in the Arena Chapel at Padua and was widely imitated thereafter.^[16]

One of the most puzzling questions raised by the Rieti cycle is its narrative sequence. The upper, damaged, level of the scene is some 130 cm above the raised floor level and was originally some two meters higher. The subject of the first fresco on the north side of the choir, the Dream of Pope Innocent III, is certain. Even if there were originally an upper register of scenes in the choir at Rieti, the surviving group does not agree with the historical progress of Saint Francis's life as codified in the Legenda Maior , the textual sources for the model of the Rieti cycle, the legend in the Upper Church at Assisi.^[17] At Assisi the Dream of Pope Innocent III, which at Rieti begins the sequence on the north wall of the choir, is the sixth in the cycle of twenty-eight narratives. The second Rieti scene, the Miracle at Greccio, is thirteenth in order at Assisi and so on. These elisions would be of no great moment in so greatly abridged a cycle but for the fact that the third scene at Rieti, the Vision of the Chariot, occurs eighth at Assisi, that is, preceding the Miracle at Greccio. Thus the abbreviated Rieti cycle not only omits scenes from its model but also rearranges their temporal sequence. That the Assisi cycle was in fact the model for the frescoes at San Francesco in Rieti is evident from the many compositional similarities and from repetitions of detail.^[18] If, for example, we juxtapose the figures of the two soldiers in the Freeing of the Heretic or the kneeling

Francis in the church at Greccio, the filiation is evident. The compositions at Rieti lack the scale and spaciousness of Assisi despite the recurrence of many individual motifs.^[19] Furthermore, the Rieti narratives are articulated less comprehendingly in space than had been the case at Assisi. It would appear that the designer of the Rieti cycle employed a combination of compositional sketches and motif books, a phenomenon noted elsewhere in early Trecento painting in Italy.^[20] The designer's selection demonstrates too the canonicity of the Assisi legend as a whole.^[21]

In contrast to its prototype the Rieti cycle is much simplified, both as regards the architectural framing of the cycle and its internal design. The "bay" system which forms so marked a feature of the overall design of the Assisi legend is lacking on the north wall of the Rieti choir, partly as a consequence of the reordering of the scenes, although the painted framing, and to a more limited extent the lighting, acknowledges the fall of the light from the east window.^[22] There does not appear to be any parallelism in the Rieti scenes, although so little survives that its original existence cannot be excluded with certainty.^[23]

It is difficult to judge the style of the Saint Francis scenes at Rieti. The votive fresco is quite evidently Roman in its formal idiom. Peter's coiffure can readily be compared with works from the circle of Pietro Cavallini, as can the color range and the curvilinear but rather sharp-edged drapery style of the composition.^[24] The diffusion of Cavallini's stylistic influence from Rome was widespread, and it can be traced in the region at Santa Maria in Vescovio, the episcopal church of the cardinal bishopric of Sabina.^[25] Nonetheless, even in this earlier stratum at Rieti, details like the monochrome angel in the niche of the throne side are comparable with details in the legend at Assisi, although the architecture of the throne itself is not dissimilar from that in the badly damaged Annunciation at Santa Cecilia in Trastevere of circa 1293.^[26] The Franciscan scenes themselves are more difficult to date, and their sedulous imitation of a revered prototype exacerbates the problem. In their coloration and style they present some resemblances to Umbrian paintings of the 1320s, although they may not be quite so late as this.^[27] In the present state of knowledge it is probably wiser to ascribe them to a minor local artist imitating a major, earlier model.

More interesting perhaps is the question, why was the decision taken to copy scenes from the Assisi legend?^[28] Rieti was an important center of the order in an area specially dear to Francis himself. Yet there is nothing in the textual sources to suggest that, Greccio apart, the chosen

scenes were particularly linked to the locality.^[29] Such imitation of Assisi occurred in murals elsewhere. An important surviving instance is the series of Franciscan scenes at San Francesco at Pistoia where the setting is also transferred to the choir.^[30] The Pistoiese cycle also reiterates the Assisi legend, although in a more accomplished manner than at Rieti: there they appear to have been complete by 1343.^[31] At Pistoia, as at Rieti, the spatial relationships of the prototype are garbled, despite the accuracy of individual detail. The phenomenon of imitation in fourteenth-century Franciscan painting remains in need of further investigation.^[32] At San Francesco in Rieti the original gothic high altar block may also have extended the range of reflections of the basilica at Assisi.^[33]

Despite their modest artistic quality, the frescoes in the choir at San Francesco at Rieti yield valuable information about Franciscan artistic programs and contemporary patronage within churches of the order, besides shedding more light on a still imperfectly understood process, the accurate transference of monumental frescoed designs from one location to another.