Mostra San Francesco - Fondazione Guido d'Arezzo

On the eight-hundredth anniversary of the death of Saint Francis, Arezzo tells the story of its special bond with the saint through the way his image has changed over the centuries. Francis is one of the few saints whose appearance was fixed early on, thanks to first-hand accounts: the frail body marked by the stigmata, the face hollowed by poverty, the habit somewhere between grey and brown, the cord with three knots. Some of his earliest images are in fact the work of a painter active in Arezzo, Margarito. Over two floors, you follow this story from the thirteenth-century panels onwards. At first, painters try to capture his features and recount his miracles. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they show him in prayer and in ecstasy. The Enlightenment all but sets him aside, and the nineteenth century rediscovers him. In 1926, for the seventh centenary, he also becomes the "Italian saint" of Fascist propaganda. The exhibition ends with an oak sculpture from the 1960s, born of the dialogue between art and the Church promoted by Paul VI.