Castelvecchio Subequo, chiesa di San Francesco: Le opzioni iconografiche nei cicli pittorici

The church and the convent of St. Francis in CastelvecchioSubequo host three cycles of medieval paintings. Two ofthese, in the choir and in the central nave, dating back tothe foundation at the end of the 13th century, and anotherfrom the end of the fourteenth century in the chapel of theCounts of Celano, that was realized at the time, probablyusing part of the structures of the original transept. Thepaintings of the choir depict Christological and Marianthemes together with scenes from the life of the founder;those at the top of the central nave, of which only a smallpart remains, reproduce an illusive gallery of arches host-ing saints and angels, while the chapel of the late four-teenth century houses a vast cycle of paintings illustrating the life of the saint.The oldest cycles show elements in common with someof the most important works of painting of the time, suchas the decoration of the Upper Basilica of Assisi and thosein some Roman churches, and therefore they can be easilycollocated in the range of Franciscan gurative culture; thepaintings also show however, if observed carefully, peculiarcharacters that are not reected elsewhere. The same ap-plies to the ‘Legend of the Saint’ in the chapel of theCounts of Celano, where the knowledge and use of mod-els of different origin appears evident, as well as the searchfor original ad hoc solutions. Each of the two decorativecampaigns distinguishes itself by its own character, whichdepends both on the different role within the space of thechurch in which the paintings are placed, as also on the re-lationships with the spirituality and culture of their respec-tive periods; a detailed observation of the different cyclesprovides, however, in both cases, a series of surprising in-formations that is able to provide new insights into a sub- ject which has too long been stiffened by the hegemony of the models of Assisi