ABSTRACT
In the earliest surviving vita panel of Saint Francis, painted for San Francesco in Pescia nine years after his death, two miracles encapsulate his life and mission: receiving the stigmata and preaching to the birds. In their pursuit of the active and contemplative life, the friars erected churches that combine spacious naves and piazzas for preaching with ample choirs for prayer. Attributed to northern Italy, its restrained decoration, consisting only of painted foliate initials, may provide a clue about how Franciscan antiphonaries of the same time looked. In the second half of the thirteenth century, Franciscans, Dominicans, and other mendicant Orders began commissioning antiphonaries with historiated and figural letters, marginalia, and other ornaments, as surviving manuscripts clearly show. Illuminations promoted the Order’s saints and theological beliefs to initiates and heightened the emotional involvement in the chants for the singers in a way that undecorated or aniconic initials could not. Mnemonic devices and sensory igniting experiences were needed.
