Master of the Franciscan Crucifixes
Osvald Sirén (O. Sirén, Toskanische Maler im xiii. Jahrhundert, Berlin 1922, p. 223) was the first to coin for the artist the name “Master of the Franciscan Crucifixes”. On the strength of the fact that he worked chiefly in Franciscan churches, most importantly in the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi, Miklós Boskovits merged his corpus of works with those of the “Master of the Crucifix of Santa Maria del Borgo” and the “Master of the Blue Crucifixes” (Sul “Maestro di Crocifissi francescani”, in Duecento. Forme e colori del Medioevo a Bologna, exhibition catalogue, Bologna, Museo Civico Archeologico, 15 April – 16 July 2000, ed. M. Medica, S. Tumidei, Bologna 2000, p. 186). The painter’s work reveals the strong influence of Giunta Pisano, with whose large cross – commissioned for the basilica in Assisi by Franciscan Vicar General Brother Elias in 1236 and sadly now lost (Medica 2019, p. 36) – he may have been familiar. It is thought that it was precisely Giunta’s cross that contributed to the dissemination in Italy around the middle of the 13th century of the iconography known as Christus patiens, Christ suffering with his eyes shut, which supplanted the hitherto ubiquitous Christus triumphans, Christ triumphant over death (E. Zappasodi, La croce dipinta in Umbria al tempo di Giunta e di Giotto, tra eleganze dolorose e coinvolgimento emotivo, in Francesco e la croce dipinta, exhibition catalogue, Perugia, Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, 30 October 2016 – 29 January 2017, ed. M. Pierini, Milan 2016, p. 69).
Thus the Master of the Franciscan Crucifixes embarked on his career in Assisi, as we can tell from his first two “opisthograph” (i.e. painted on both sides) processional crucifixes now in the Museo del Tesoro in Assisi (inv. no. 3) and the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne (inv. no. 873) (Tartuferi 2015a, p. 152) respectively. The turning point in the style of the painter, who initially followed his own Umbrian beginnings, came with his move to the Umbria-Romagna region in the 1260s and ‘70s, when he began to be influenced by two other crosses painted by Giunta, the San Ranierino Crucifix (Museo Nazionale di San Matteo, Pisa, inv. no. 2325) and the crucifix in the Basilica di San Domenico in Bologna. This more mature phase in his career is associated with three crosses from the church of San Francesco in Bologna (Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna, inv. no. 10038; a cross from the Muzzarelli Chapel and another from the library in the convent of San Francesco) and with the Faenza cross, the latter first attributed to the Master by Sandberg Vavalà (1929, p. 841-844). Ennio Lunghi (Oltre l’Appennino, in Da Giotto a Gentile. Pittura e scultura a Fabriano fra Due e Trecento, exhibition catalogue, Fabriano, Pinacoteca Civica, 26 July – 30 November 2014, ed. V. Sgarbi, Florence 2014, pp. 94-96) suggested that the anonymous artist should be identified as Guido di Pietro da Gubbio, who is recorded in Bologna in 1268–71, but Zappasodi rejected the hypothesis on the grounds that Lunghi’s arguments were less than solid (E. Zappasodi, La croce dipinta…op. cit., p. 97, n. 28). The most recent hypothesis concerning the artist was put forward by Lollini, who suggested that the “Master” may in fact have been a collective entity, in other words not a single individual but an artists’ workshop. (Lollini 2023, p.53)
