Dear colleagues,
in the hope that I don't get arrested, and that this is of interest, I am
sending the following to the list.
Best wishes,
George
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Unusual Fresco Noted in Rome Church
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Italy-Fresco-Discovered.html
November 8, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:52 a.m. ET
ROME (AP) -- Fragments of an unusual fresco painted more than 700
years ago were found when a Baroque altar painting was moved in the
church of Ara Coeli in Downtown Rome.
The fresco depicts the Madonna and Child flanked by St. John the
Baptist and St. John the Evangelist.
Its importance to art historians lies in its rare combination of
styles: the Virgin is in rigid Byzantine manner, while the child is
in a more naturalistic manner prefiguring the humanistic
Renaissance style that would emerge a century later.
The fresco is probably by the school of Pietro Cavallini, a Roman
master famed for his mosaics, art historian Tommaso Strinati said
Wednesday.
According to Strinati, the fresco was painted in the 1290s. It is
in an ornately decorated chapel and was found during a restoration.
The Ara Coeli church, one of Rome's oldest, sits on the Capitoline
Hill next to the Roman Forum. Historians say the church is at least
1,500 years old.
The interior has been redone many times through the centuries,
obscuring the fresco and other decoration.
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