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Beyond the Text: Franciscan Art and the Construction of Religion

edited by Xavier Seubert and Oleg Bychkov

often the exclusive or privileged tool for understanding the past. From art historical, social, theological and philosophical perspectives, the essays in this volume probe the art and visual culture of the early Franciscan movement to reveal insights and nuances of the life and power of this revolutionary phase of the Catholic religion.

Contributors to this collection are William Barcham, Oleg Bychkov, William Cook, Theresa Flanigan, David Flood, Holly Flora, Cristina Cruz Gonzalez, David Haack, Trinita Kennedy, Irving Lavin, Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, Robert Lentz, Beth Mulvaney, Lynn Ransom, Xavier Seubert

Luke Wadding's Art:  Irish Franciscan Patronage in Seventeenth Century Rome

by Giovan Battista Fidanza

 The Irish Franciscan friar, Luke Wadding (Waterford, 1588 - Rome,1657), was a very significant figure for his time. Aged fifteen, he left Ireland for Portugal never to return. In 1618 he moved to Rome as part of a Spanish diplomatic mission to ask the Holy See to recognize the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, remaining there for the rest of his life.
Primarily, Wadding is famous for his highly important contribution to Franciscan history, having written the first eight volumes of Annales Minorum, the great work devoted to the history of the three Franciscan orders. As an accomplished theologian, he also played a prominent role in the ecclesiastical politics of Rome in the 1600s.
This book deals with Wadding’s artistic involvement in commissioning works of art and architecture, chiefly for ‘his’ Church of St. Isidore in Rome; his portraits – both painted and engraved – are also investigated. By choosing such important artists as Andrea Sacchi and Carlo Maratti, he was showcasing the Church of St. Isidore as a significant example of art and architecture in seventeenth-century Rome. Most of this research has been carried out from unpublished documents kept in Roman archives.

Giovan Battista Fidanza was born in Perugia (Italy) in 1967. He was awarded a PhD in Art History from the University of Perugia. Since 2006 he has held the position of Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Rome Tor Vergata. His topics of research concern the history and technology of art materials, with particular reference to wooden statues and furniture of the Early Modern Age. He has also studied seventeenth and eighteenth century painting in the Papal States, discovering many unpublished facts during his archival research. His essays have been published in many prestigious journals, such as The Burlington Magazine, Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, Bollettino d’Arte and Rivista d’Arte. He currently lives near Rome with his wife and son.

From St. Francis to Giotto

by Vincent Moleta

This book was not meant for the specialist. It brings together and reconsiders some of the most familiar expressions of early Franciscan culture, while it merely touches on related questions such as the debate over poverty and the influence of Joachim of Fiore. 

Moleta’s aim was to show St. Francis through the eyes fo Italian writers and painters active during the century that followed his death, and to outline his place in the native culture that flowered in Italy from the mid-thirteenth to mid fourteenth centuries.