Monday, October 11, 2010

Maesta Tri Santi Giovanni Battista e Giovanni Evangelista


Title and Date of Work: Maesta Tri Santi Giovanni Battista e Giovanni Evangelista, 1368-1452
Name of Artist: Bicci di Lorenzo Exact Location: The Treasury of the Basilica of Saint Francis in The Frederick Mason Perkins Collection Assisi, Italy
Medium: Oil and Gold
Dimensions: About 3 feet by 1.5 feet


     This painting is one of fifty-eight pieces from Frederick Mason Perkins private art collection donated to the Treasury of the Basilica of Saint Francis. American painter, Perkins died in 1955, two years after signing his collection over to the Basilica. The reason he wanted his collection at Saint Francis's Treasury is to show his adoration and love for Saint Francis. He was baptized at Saint Francis’s and joined the Catholic Church. Therefore he adopted the name Francis and joined the family of Secular Franciscans at the Basilica.
     The collection left to the Basilica of Saint Francis contains art works from Sienese, Florentine, Emiliana, and Venetian styles and dates back from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries. From 1977 until 1997 the collection was located in an ancient dormitory of the Scared Convent but after an earthquake in 1997 the treasury was closed until resonantly being open to the public. The Frederick Mason Perkin’s collection broadened the culture heritage of the First Saint Francis Shrine endowing the Treasury of the Basilica of Saint Francis with Italian Gothic and Renaissance art works.

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