n no other Italian artistic place has the artistic genius been lavish of itself with greater renovating and creative power than in the upper Basilica in Assisi.
Here the northern Gothic, modified according to the Franciscan principle of “Poverty with joy” (St Francis, Admonishment XXVII), found its first Italian version distinguishing itself for the sobriety of the wall infrastructure, for the elimination of any embellishment ( from influences of the Cistercian Gothic) and for the brightness of the frescoed walls.
The very wide pictorial text, then, is the greatest evidence of the passage from the Byzantine-Romanesque artistic civilization to the Italian one, having been realized by the last representatives of Greek patterns in Italy (Cavallini, Turriti, and Risuti) and by the greatest innovators (Cimabue and especially Giotto and his followers).
Also the transalpine craftsmen of storied glass, then, entering the revived Italian artistic climate for the first time, open new horizons to their already rich tastes, themes, and techniques; with the collaboration of Italians they create a complex of bright openings of the rarest chromatic transparency and linguistic and thematic organic unity.
“The Basilica of Assisi constitutes a bright and happy exception for Italy with the complex of its twenty-eight original windows, even if not integrally preserved. Besides, it is the only, almost exclusive document of half a century of the glass history, with unique texts. In the distressing lack of products like these, the peninsula suffers from today, we can see in them the gradual passing from a tributary subjection to the northern civilization to a progressive liberation under the impulse of the great monumental painting, which is a typical local heritage. That liberation takes place beyond the dawn of the XIV century with the same speed as the revolutionary subversion created by the Giottesque painting and because of its impulse”. (G. Marchini)
“Among the first and most important Italian interpretations of the Gothic architecture, the sanctuary of St Francis fits into the landscape of Assisi as an irreplaceable central element.
The series of pictorial texts that decorate the interior intimately fused with the architecture, is the completest and highest document of the Italian figurative civilization of the XIII and XIV centuries in Italy”. (F. Santi)
Having its wall structures, its pictorial covering as well as its windows, been finished towards the waning of the XIII century, the Upper Basilica of Assisi cries out in the course of centuries by the most suggestive and eloquent language of the artist from all over Europe, its loud:
“Praise be to Thee, my Lord
for giving us
Friar Francis”
