chapter 12 Reflecting on Mary: The Splendor of the Madonna in the Lower Church of

Darrelyn Gunzburg

The Basilica of San Francesco (Figure 12.1), the place that was created as the burial site of St. (c.1181/82–1226), the founder and leader of the Friars Minor, consists of two churches one on top of the other, both cru- ciform in plan with a single nave. As has been well-documented, the Lower Church was dug into the rock and completed on 25 May 1230, when St. Francis’ body was translated from the Church of St. George, where it had been taken and buried on his death to avoid being ransacked by the Perugians. Thus the Lower Church served as a sanctuary for the tomb of St. Francis. This Lower Church is a place into which little natural daylight falls. Nevertheless, in the reconstruction and redecoration that occurred from 1288 onwards, two fres- coes of Mary were painted in the second decade of the fourteenth century in the north and south transepts, both with gilded backgrounds. La Madonna dei Tramonti (Madonna of the Sunsets) was painted by Pietro Lorenzetti (c.1280– c.1348) between the years 1316–1319, located towards the base of the east wall of the south transept. The name was said to derive from the fact that every evening the fresco is lit by the rays of the setting sun. Yet the literature on this fresco is not clear with regards to which sunsets the title is referring, why the sunlight was considered theologically important, nor how sunlight could get into the Lower Church. A second fresco, the Madonna and Child with Two Royal Saints, painted by Simone Martini (1284–1344) slightly earlier than those of Lorenzetti, is situated in mirror position to La Madonna dei Tramonti, on the opposite side of the crossing towards the base of the east wall of the north transept. The literature is silent about the connection of this fresco in relation to the sun. This paper, therefore, considers both frescoes from the perspectives of their initial creation, their subject matter, their placements in connection with the sun, and the associated role of the sun in Christian theology as a way of investigating how the medieval understood and reflected on Mary.

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1 Background

As a funerary monument, the orientation of the Basilica of San Francesco dif- fers from other buildings of this kind in that its apsidal end points west rather than east. As Donal Cooper and Janet Robson noted, ‘in liturgical terms it can be said to be ‘occidented’ rather than oriented.’1 This positioning highlights the Basilica’s significance as a papal foundation, since the Upper Church was ­designed to embrace the specific needs of the papal liturgy, one where the priest celebrated Mass from the apsidal side of the altar facing the congrega- tion, so the priest faced east. This western focus is one that is found in the three major papal basilicas in : St. Peter’s, Santa Maria Maggiore, and St. John Lateran.2 The town of Assisi sits at the meeting point of the plains and the mountains, and the Basilica is built on a ridge of land that falls away to the west, north, and south (Figures 12.1 and 12.2). When St. Francis was alive, this area was known as the Collo dell’Inferno, or ‘Hill of Hell,’ due to it being a place for the torture and execution of the condemned.3 Although this appeared to be an eccentric place in which to bury St. Francis, according to Silvestro Nessi, the first unambigu- ous mention of this fact came in 1277 from Fra Raniero d’Arezzo (d. 1304). Fra Raniero was a contemporary of the companions of St. Francis and he learned from them that St. Francis had explicitly requested to be buried on the Hill of Hell, following the way of of who had been crucified and died as a criminal beyond the city wall of Jerusalem. When St. Francis’ companions had pointed out the bad reputation of the place, he had replied: ‘If the place is now called the Hill of Hell, it will be called the Gate of Heaven and the En- trance of Paradise.’4 The land was donated by Simone da Pucciarello, who was, according to tradition, a faithful companion to Francis from his youth.5 Since it was forbidden for Franciscans to own property, the patronage and ownership of both church and convent was undertaken by Gregory ix (1145–1241), in the name of the Holy See, and it was he who laid the first stone on 17 July 1228, one day after St. Francis was canonised and less than two years

1 Donal Cooper and Janet Robson, The Making of Assisi: The Pope, the Franciscans and the Painting of the Basilica (New Haven and London, 2013), xi. 2 Cooper and Robson, The Making of Assisi, xi. 3 Carla Pietramellara et al., Il Sacro Convento Di Assisi (Roma, 1988), 6, 11, 65. 4 Ms. Vat. 4354, c. 108. ‘Si locus ille modo vocabatur Colli Inferni erit quando vocabitur porta coeli et janua paradisi.’ Silvestro Nessi, La Basilica Di S. Francesco in Assisi E La Sua Documen- tazione Storica, Vol. 5, Il Miracolo Di Assisi (Assisi, 1984), 20. 5 Pietramellara et al., Il Sacro Convento, 10–11 and Photo 1.