² For a concise summary of Egidio's life, with full bibliography, see Vecchio, S., ‘Egidio d'Assisi’, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani XLII (Rome, 1993), 312–16Google Scholar. The date of Egidio's death is sometimes calculated as 1261: see, for example, Brooke, R., Scripta Leonis, Rufini et Angeli, Sociorum S. Francisci (Oxford, 1970), 349Google Scholar.

³ For an overview of the texts relating to Egidio, see Campagnola, S. Da, ‘La ‘Leggenda’ di frate Egidio d'Assisi nei secoli XIII–XV’, in Nicolini, U. (ed.), Francescanesimo e società cittadina— L'esempio di Perugia (Perugia, 1979), 113–43Google Scholar.

⁴ Salimbene of Parma seems to allude to the short Vita Aegidii in his Cronica: ‘cuius vitam frater Leo … sufficienter descripsit’; Scalia, G. (ed.), Cronica fratris Salimbene de Adam II (Bari, 1966), 810Google Scholar.

⁵ Analecta Franciscana [hereafter AF] 3 (Quaracchi, 1897), 74–115Google Scholar.

⁶ AF 4 (1906), 205–13Google Scholar.

⁷ Described by the Bollandists, ‘in eadem sacristia [of San Francesco al Prato], servatur liber MS. In membrana, satis antiquus, catenulis ferreis clausus, in quo descripto sunt, vita, collationes et miracula B. Fr. Aegidii, lingua Latina satis rudi’, Acta Sanctorum [hereafter AS], Aprilis Tomus III (Paris/Rome, 1866), 220Google Scholar.

⁸ For example, AF 4 (1906), 214–33Google Scholar.

⁹ Gordon, D., ‘A Perugian provenance for the Franciscan double-sided altar-piece by the Maestro di S. Francesco’, The Burlington Magazine 124 (1982), 70–7Google Scholar. The Perugian connection was suggested independently by Scarpellini, P., Il tesoro della basilica di San Francesco ad Assisi (Assisi/Florence, 1980), 45Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Gordon, ‘A Perugian provenance’ (above, n. 9), 75: ‘There is a case for arguing … that… it [the altarpiece] was actually designed to stand on the altar mensa above that very sarcophagus’.

¹¹ Cook, W.R., Images of St. Francis of Assisi in Painting, Stone and Glass from the Earliest Images to ca. 1320 in Italy — A Catalogue (Florence/Perth, 1999), 163Google Scholar.

¹² Cannon, J., ‘Dating the frescoes by the Maestro di San Francesco at Assisi’, The Burlington Magazine 124 (1982), 65–9Google Scholar.

¹³ Garms, J., ‘Gräber von Heiligen und Seligen’, in Garms, J. and Romanini, A.M. (eds), Skulptur und Grabmal des Spätmittelalters in Rom und Italien. Akten des Kongresses ‘Scultura e monumento sepolcrale del tardo medioevo a Roma e in Italia’ (Rom, 1985) (Vienna, 1990), 93–4Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Guardabassi, M. (ed.), Il tempio di S. Francesco al Prato in Perugia (Perugia, 1927), 41Google Scholar, n. 2. The sarcophagus is 1.065 m high, 2.265 m wide and 0.95 m at its deepest.

¹⁵ AF 3 (1897), 113Google Scholar: ‘Quod cum audisset vir sanctus, in fervore spiritus dixit: ‘Dicite Perusinis, quod nec propter canonizationem nee propter magna miracula unquam pulsabuntur campanae; signum non dabitur nisi Ionae’’.

¹⁶ AF 3 (1897), 114–15Google Scholar: ‘Fratre vero Aegidio defuncto, Perusini quaerentes lapidem, de quo eius aedificarent sepulcrum, quendam reperiunt tumulum marmoreum, in quo Ionae historia erat sculpta. Et tune cognoverunt, illud fore suae sanctitatis evidens signum ab ipso, ut praedicitur, prophetatum. In quo ipsum tradiderunt honorificae sepulturae’. Bartolomeo of Pisa reproduced a similar passage but had earlier noted: ‘quia post mortem in sepulchro invento in agro, ubi erat sculpta historia Ionae prophetae, est tumulatus’, AF 4 (1906), 210, 213Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Da Campagnola, ‘La ‘Leggenda’ di frate Egidio’ (above, n. 3), 122. In Cortona a pagan sarcophagus, discovered in a field, had already been used for the burial of the Franciscan Beato Guido of Cortona (ob. 1247); see Cannon, J. and Vauchez, A., Margherita of Cortona and the Lorenzetti: Sienese Art and the Cult of a Holy Woman in Medieval Tuscany (University Park (Pennsylvania), 1999), 97Google Scholar, n. 58.

¹⁸ Scalia, Cronica Fratris Salimbene II (above, n. 4), 810; Gordon, ‘A Perugian provenance’ (above, n. 9), 75.

¹⁹ Scalia, Cronica Fratris Salimbene II (above, n. 4), 889 (‘quand o fui Perusii’); Gordon, ‘A Perugian provenance’ (above, n. 9), 75.

²⁰ The bequest forms part of Simonetta di Forteguerra's will, transcribed by Nicolini, U., ‘I frati della penitenza a Perugia alla fine del sec. XIII’, in Il movimento del disciplinati nel settimo centenario dal suo inizio — Perugia, 1260 (Perugia, 1962), 377Google Scholar.

²¹ See below, n. 51. The present author does not accept Da Campagnola's proposition (‘La ‘Leggenda’ di frate Egidio’ (above, n. 3), 122, 140–1) that Egidio's body was only placed in the sarcophagus in 1439, an assertion which depends on all earlier documentary references being later interpolations.

²² Gordon ‘A Perugian provenance’ (above, n. 9), 75.

²³ Krüger, K., ‘Selbstdarstellung im Konflikt — Zur Repräsentation der Bettelorden im Medium der Kunst’, in Oexle, O.G. and Von-Huelsen-Esch, A. (eds), Die Repräsentation der Gruppen (Göttingen, 1998), 172, 180Google Scholar.

²⁴ Strehlke, C., ‘Francis of Assisi: his culture, his cult, and his basilica’, in Morello, G. and Kanter, L.B. (eds), The Treasury of Saint Francis of Assisi (Milan, 1999), 34Google Scholar. See also the catalogue entry for the Maestro di San Francesco panels by L. Kanter and P. Palladino, p. 72.

²⁵ Lupattelli, A., Dell'importanza religiosa, storica ed artistica dell'ex chiesa di San Francesco al Prato in Perugia (Rome, 1902), 23Google Scholar, n. 1. The crypt's present overgrown state prevents any verification of this observation. The crypt location was reasserted recently by Commodi, B., L'Oratorio di San Bernardino presso la chiesa di San Francesco al Prato in Perugia (Perugia, 1996), 16Google Scholar.

²⁶ For this fresco, now conserved in the Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria, see Santi, F., Dipinti, sculture e oggetti d'arte di età romanica e gotica — Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria, Perugia (Rome, 1969), 67–8Google Scholar. The painting, found in 1888 ‘sopra l'altare’ of the crypt, measures 1.28 m high and 2.53 m wide, and includes Saints Francis, Anthony, Louis of Toulouse and Clare to either side of a central Crucifixion group.

²⁷ Cook, Images of St. Francis (above, n. 11), 162. Serena Romano described a similar crypt/high altar arrangement in her catalogue entry in Valssasina, C. Bon and Garibaldi, V. (eds), Dipinti, sculture e ceramiche della Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria: studi e restauri (Florence, 1994), 58Google Scholar.

²⁸ For the location of the crypt altar, see Lupattelli, Dell'importanza religiosa (above, n. 25), 23, n. 1.

²⁹ The Maestro di San Francesco retable was c. 3.7 m wide according to Gordon's reconstruction. For the Franciscan preference for wide altar mensae, see Gardner, J., ‘Some Franciscan altars of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries’, in Borg, A. and Martindale, A. (eds), The Vanishing Past: Studies of Medieval Art, Liturgy and Metrology Presented to Christopher Hohler (Oxford, 1981), 2–12Google Scholar.

³⁰ Gordon, ‘A Perugian provenance’ (above, n. 9), 76, thought that the arcade of saints on the altarpiece may have faced the apse. However, the evidence of other double-sided altarpieces (notably Duccio's Maestà) could suggest that the Passion scenes were intended for the ‘back’. It is also unclear whethe r the sculpted arcade of the sarcophagus would have faced the nave or apse (the other three sides of the coffin being undecorated).

³¹ Krüger, ‘Selbstdarstellung im Konflikt’ (above, n. 23), 180, may have envisaged a genuine open-sided Tischaltar, but no Franciscan altars of this type are known. An oft-cited example of a Tischaltar shrine, that of San Cerbone in the Duomo of Mass a Marritima, has been reassessed above by Norman, Diana, ‘A place of pilgrimage: a proposal for the original location of the Arca of Saint Cerbone’, Papers of the British School at Rome 69 (2001), 191–221CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³² The most useful studies of the church are: Salmareggi, A.M. Sorbi, I primordi della chiesa di San Francesco al Prato in Perugia (Santa Maria degli Angeli, 1963)Google Scholar; Guerrieri, O., Il tempio di S. Francesco al Prato e l'oratorio di S. Bernardino in Perugia (Perugia, 1974)Google Scholar; Marioli, L., ‘Appunti sulla vicenda architettonica della chiesa di S. Francesco al Prato di Perugia’, in S. Francesco al Prato: dall'abbandono al ripristino (Perugia, 1977), 9–62Google Scholar.

³³ Lupattelli, Dell'importanza religiosa (above, n. 25), 23, n. 1.

³⁴ This plan forms the frontispiece to BAP, ms 3297.

³⁵ Orsini, B., Guida al forestiere per l'augusta della città di Perugia (Perugia, 1784), 306Google Scholar; Siepi, S., Descrizione topologica-istorica di Perugia II (Perugia, 1822), 784Google Scholar.

³⁶ Modestini, G.M., Descrìzione della chiesa di S. Francesco de PP. minori conventuali della città di Perugia (Perugia, 1787)Google Scholar, BAP, ms 3297, fol. 22: ‘II Sacro Corp o di esso B. Egidio conservasse … riposto in una Cassa entro la nicchia. Anticamente esisteva dentro il nobile avello di marmo, che vedesi sotto la mensa dello stesso altare’.

³⁷ In a letter written to the Baldeschi family shortly before this date the friars expressed their wish to ‘fare nuovo altare e cappella in luogo che sia più in vista, ed esposto, ad onore del Beato Egidio d'Assisi, … nel sito presso l'altare maggiore dalla parte che dicesi in Cornu Evangelii. Ma siccome dietro a tal sito restava anticamente la Cappella di Giuspadronato della Nobile Prosapia Baldeschi’; ASP, Corporazioni religiose soppressi [hereafter, CRS], San Francesco al Prato, Serie miscellanea 34, no numeration. Another letter in the same busta, marked ‘pro traslatione Corporij B. Egidij’ and dated 17 January 1781, authorized the ‘extractionem Capsam dicti Beati Egidii … a veteri ara ad … novam Capellam noviter erectam … in loco ubi conditum nunc est illud que legitime recognitum in nova Capella sub altari collocandi’. Earlier recognitions seem to have occurred in 1738 and 1757, and these examinations probably bracket another translation — in 1738 the friars were proceeding ‘ad remotionem et demolitionem nonnullorum altarium et signanter illius divo Egidio dicati’: see Guardabassi, Il tempio (above, n. 14), 43, n. 1.

³⁸ Jacobilli, L., Vita dei santi e beati dell'Umbria I (Foligno, 1647), 427Google Scholar.

³⁹ Gordon, ‘A Perugian Provenance’ (above, n. 9), 75, called this ‘a phrase open to ambiguity, but which could signify that the sarcophagus lay below the mensa of the main altar’.

⁴⁰ O. Lancellotti, Scorta sagra, BAP, ms 61, fol. 490v: ‘a piedi del Crocifisso che si vede nella muraglia, di basso rilievo incontro alla port a maggiore, e fatto nel 1232 essendo Sommo Pontefice Gregorio X’ (Lancellott i evidently misread the date).

⁴¹ Jacobilli, L., Vita dei sand e bead dell'Umbria II (Foligno, 1656), xxxxiiGoogle Scholar; Gordon, ‘A Perugian provenance’ (above, n. 9), 75.

⁴² Crispolti, C., Perugia Augusta descriua I (Perugia, 1648), 140Google Scholar.

⁴³ Tiranti, A., ‘Novità per Pompeo Cocchi’, Esercizi 8 (1985), 20–9Google Scholar; esp. pp. 20–2. The panel measures 2.11 m high by 1.36 m wide. Tiranti was mistaken in placing the tomb in the ‘navata destra’ — see below, n. 47.

⁴⁴ Orsini, Guida al forestiere (above, n. 35), 306, suggested 1513 as a date for the painting.

⁴⁵ In addition, an ‘altare del Crucifisso’ is recorded on the south side of the nave in the sixteenth century, see ASP, CRS, San Francesco al Prato, Serie Miscellanea 15, fol. 9v.

⁴⁶ Four sepoltuarii survive, spanning the years 1532 to 1640: ASP, CRS, San Francesco al Prato, Serie Miscellanea 14–17.

⁴⁷ ASP, CRS, San Francesco al Prato, Serie miscellanea 16, fol. 17r; see also 17, fol. 4r (composed in 1640). In the latter, the line is described ‘incominciando dalle scale dell'altare grande sino alia Port a che va in Convento a man o destra (braccio destra verso il campanile)’. The manuscripts employ ‘destra’ and ‘sinistra’ from a point of view looking down the nave from the high altar.

⁴⁸ ASP, CRS, San Francesco al Prato, Serie miscellanea 19, fols 18r and 24r.

⁴⁹ Fantozzi, A., ‘Alcune memorie intorno al culto di S. Francesco d'Assisi, di S. Antonio di Padova e del B. Egidio d'Assisi nella città di Perugia’, Archivium Franciscanum Historicum 33 (1940), 227–33Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ ASP, Riformanze 75, fol. 27v.

⁵¹ ASP, Riformanze 75, fol. 27v. Fantozzi, ‘Alcune memorie’ (above, n. 49), 232, did not reproduce the references to Egidio's ‘archa’.

⁵² ASP, Riformanze 75, fol. 29v.

⁵³ ASP, Riformanze 75, fol. 41 v.

⁵⁴ ASP, Riformanze 75, fol. 41v. Fantozzi, ‘Alcune memorie’ (above, n. 49), 232, again omitted the reference to the ‘archa’.

⁵⁵ ASP, Riformanze 76, fol. 15r. The passage described ‘dicta grata, que redundat ad laudem omnipotentis Dei et ornamentum dicte ecclesie Sancti Francisci et totius civitatis’.

⁵⁶ For example, the set of iron grilles commissioned for Saint Dominic's shrine in 1288; Alee, V., Il convento di S. Domenico in Bologna nel secolo XIII (Bologna, 1972), 164, 167Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ Da Campagnola, ‘La ‘Leggenda’ di frate Egidio’ (above, n. 3), 121, 143.

⁵⁸ Lupattelli, Dell'importanza religiosa (above, n. 25), 23, n. 1, linked a removal of the tomb from the crypt to probable damage inflicted by the 1340 earthquake.

⁵⁹ ASP, Riformanze 74, fol. 33r. San Francesco al Prato fostered several other beati cults. In 1320 the Perugians forcibly removed the remains of Beato Conrad of Offida (ob. 1306) from the Franciscan church in Bastia and bestowed them on San Francesco al Prato. Bartolomeo of Pisa described how this furta sacra halted miracles at Conrad's tomb, AF 4 (1906), 233–4Google Scholar. The author of the 1335 Catalogus sanctorum fratrum minorum, however, had earlier argued that Conrad had prayed at his death to be spared post mortem miracles; Da Campagnola, ‘La ‘Leggenda’ di frate Egidio’ (above, n. 3), 136. Conrad's remains were recorded in the sacristy by Crispolti, , Perugia Augusta I (above, n. 42), 141Google Scholar, and Bartolomeo's phrase ‘Iacet Perusii in conventu’ may already refer to this location. The 1566 inventory of the sacristy described a wooden ‘cassetta pent a longa circa tre piedi e mezzo nella quale sta il corpo del beato Corrado da Eufida’; ASP, CRS, San Francesco al Prato, Serie miscellanea 20, fol. 38v. This seems to have been replaced by another container in 1616; Guardabassi, Il tempio (above, n. 14), 43, n. 1. According to Bartolomeo, the church also guarded the remains of Beato Ventura of Assisi (ob. 1378) and Beato Nicola of Assisi (ob. 1393); AF 4 (1906), 234Google Scholar. Ventura's shrine was recorded ‘in un'altro altare incontro alia porta della chiesa’ by Crispolti, , Perugia Augusta I (above, n. 42), 141Google Scholar. Lancellotti confirmed that Ventura was buried above the altar of Sant'Appolonia, situated on the north side of the nave opposite the main door on the south side of the church, Scorta sagra (above, n. 40), BAP, ms 60, fol. 44r. The memory of Nicola's tomb had been lost as early as the seventeenth century.

⁶⁰ For this panel and its dating see: Scarpellini, P., ‘Mariano d'Antonio e il Palazzo dei Priori’, Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia 11 (1973–1974), 580–1Google Scholar; Santi, F., Dipinti sculture e oggetti dei secoli XV–XVI — Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria, Perugia (Rome, 1985), 31–2Google Scholar. It may be noted that the commune's payments were not only for the grate, but also ‘pro ornando dictum tumulum et sepulturam’, ASP, Riformanze 76, fol. 15r.

⁶¹ The same features are present in the small portrayal of Egidio identified by Gordon on the double-sided altarpiece painted for Monteripido c. 1322; Gordon, D., ‘The so-called Paciano Master and the Franciscans in Perugia’, Apollo 143 (1996), 33–9Google Scholar. They also appear in a later fresco in Egidio's cell behind the church at Monteripido and in the earlier ‘Confirmation of the Rule’ in the Saint Franci s Cycle in the Upper Church at Assisi, where Egidio is appropriately placed third behind Francis. The Beato had accompanied Francis to Rome in 1210; Vecchio, ‘Egidio d'Assisi’ (above, n. 2), 312.

⁶² Seidel, M., ‘Condiziamento iconografico e scelta semantica: Simone Martini e la tavola del beato Agostino Novello’, in Bellosi, L. (ed.), Simone Martini: atti del convegno (Siena, 1985), 75–80Google Scholar.

⁶³ de Lisboa, M., Parte segunda de las chronicas de los frayles menores II (Alcala de Henares, 1566)Google Scholar, fols 55r–v: ‘Sobre ella esta [Egidio's shrine] vu altar y retablo antiguo con su ymagen’. This passage appears to depend on anachronistic information — Marcos's text post-dates the replacement of Mariano's panel with Pompeo Cocchi's Crucifixion by several decades.

⁶⁴ It is unclear at what date an altar became attached to the shrine, and the 1439–40 documents do not refer to one. The relationship between beati shrines and altars has been discussed by Cannon, J., ‘Popular saints and private chantries: the Sienese tomb-altar of Margherita of Cortona and questions of liturgical use’, in Boch, N., de Blaauw, S., Frommel, C.H. and Kessler, H. (eds), Kunst und Liturgie im Mittelalter, Akten des Internationalen Kongresses der Bibliotheca Hertziana und des Nederlands Instituut te Rome, 27–29 September 1997 (Römisches Jahrbuch der Bibliotheca Hertziana, Beiheft zu Band 33) (Rome, 2001), 149–62Google Scholar.

⁶⁵ Orsini, Guida al forestiere (above, n. 35), 315: ‘In una stanza appresso questa Sagrestia si conserva il feretro del B. Egidio … sù cui fu dipoi dipinto il Beato con diversi gesta della vita’; Siepi, , Descrizione II (above, n. 35), 785Google Scholar, added that the painting had served as the ‘feretro al Corpo del B. quando fu qui trasferito da s. Franc, al Monte’. Similar traditions were associated with thirteenth-century panels of Saint Francis in Assisi: see Lunghi, E., Il crocefisso di Giunta Pisano e l'icona del ‘Maestro di San Francesco’ alla Porziuncola (Santa Maria degli Angeli, 1995), 65–91Google Scholar.

⁶⁶ Solberg, G., ‘A reconstruction of Taddeo di Bartolo's altar-piece for S. Francesco a Prato, Perugia’, The Burlington Magazine 134 (1992), 646–56Google Scholar.

⁶⁷ While the scene clearly depicts the sarcophagus, some discrepancies are evident — for example, the reduction of the arcade to five fields. Some elements are, however, rendered in some detail, particularly the sea monster in the Jonah relief.

⁶⁸ The possibility that Egidio's own body is represented should also be considered: see Da Campagnola, ‘La ‘Leggenda’ di frate Egidio’ (above, n. 3), 143.

⁶⁹ This scene lacks an inscription and is usually wrongly identified; the 1777 drawing subtitled it ‘Singularis Raptus Beati’ and omitted the sarcophagus altogether (Fig. 7). The iconography is impossible to discern from photographs. Da Campagnola, ‘La ‘Leggenda’ di frate Egidio’ (above, n. 3), 142–3, was the first to identify it correctly.

⁷⁰ AS, Aprilis Tomus III (1866), 244–9, under the title De Signis et Miraculis, quae Dominus Ostendit per B. Fratrem Aegidium. The occurrence of post mortem miracles at Egidio's tomb was somewhat controversial, owing to the early tradition that the Beato had requested that he work no miracles after his death, first recorded by Salimbene; Scalia, , Cronica Fratris Salimbene II (above, n. 4), 810Google Scholar. Da Campagnola, ‘La ‘Leggenda’ di frate Egidio’ (above, n. 3), interpreted this element of Egidio's legend as a polemic against the exploitation of shrines that also enveloped the cult of Conrad of Offida — see above, n. 59. Egidio's post mortem miracles are included in abbreviated form in the De Conformitate; AF 4 (1906), 213Google Scholar. For a comprehensive analysis of the lost Perugian manuscript see Di Fonzo, L., ‘L'anonimo perugino tra le fonti francescane del secolo XIII — rapporti letterari e testo critico’, Miscellanea Francescana 72 (1972), 117–483Google Scholar.

⁷¹ AS, Aprilis Tomus III (1866), 245.

⁷² For this term, see Blaise, A., Lexicon Latinitatis Medii Aevi (Turnholt, 1975), 688–9Google Scholar; especially ‘arceau de pierre sur une tombe’. Egidio's remains had been moved from Monteripido to San Francesco al Prato ‘intra secundem ab obitu mensem’: see Guardabassi, Il tempio (above, n. 14), 8. An unpublished copy of an indulgence for those visiting Egidio's tomb confirms its location in San Francesco al Prato in May the following year. The text, copied in October 1602, was dated ‘IX Kal. Maij, Pontificatus P. Urbani PP. IV. anno secundo’ (that is, 1263). It conceded one year's indulgence to ‘omnibus accendentibus ad Ecclesiam Beati Francisci de Ordine Fratrum Minorum Perusini Conventum apud quern requiescit corpus Fratris Egidij ejusdem ordinis in die Anniversarij obitu ejusdem Fratris’: ASP, CRS, San Francesco al Prato, Serie miscellanea 34, no pagination. Di Fonzo, ‘L'anonimo perugino’ (above, n. 70), 403, believed the miracula to date from April 1262 until the early months of 1263. The sarcophagus was referred to as a ‘pilum’ in 1282 — see above, n. 20.

⁷³ AS, Aprilis Tomus III (1866), 247.

⁷⁴ AS, Aprilis Tomus III (1866), 247. Sorbi Salmareggi, I primordi della chiesa (above, n. 32), 72, considered that Orlandinello was stooping to enter the subterranean crypt of the church. The crypt, however, was entered at ground level, from the cloister of the convent.

⁷⁵ AS, Aprilis Tomus III (1866), 248.

⁷⁶ AS, Aprilis Tomus III (1866), 245.

⁷⁷ AS, Aprilis Tomus III (1866), 247.

⁷⁸ AS, Aprilis Tomus III (1866), 247.

⁷⁹ Cannon and Vauchez, Margherita of Cortona (above, n. 17), 57–60. Similar devotions are noted with particular frequency among post mortem miracles at the tomb of Nicholas of Tolentino: see Occhioni, N. (ed.), Il processo per la canonizzazione di S. Nicola da Tolentino (Rome, 1984)Google Scholar.

⁸⁰ The function of the altarpieces commissioned for the high altar is discussed in my article ‘From the Maestro di San Francesco to Perugino: double-sided altarpieces and the origins of the retro-choir in the Provincia Sancti Francisci’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes (forthcoming).

⁸¹ For these frescoes, now conserved in the Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria, see Santi, Dipinti, sculture e oggetti (above, n. 26), 67–8, fig. 34a, b, c. The fresco altarpiece omits Egidio, and the two Marian scenes are more suited to the oratory of a laudesi confraternity.

⁸² The church's foundation stone was laid by Innocent IV between 1251 and 1253. For the debated completion date, see Commodi, L'Oratorio di San Bernardino (above, n. 25), 9, n. 20; Cooper, In medio ecclesiae (above, n. 1), 194–5.

⁸³ Mendicant churches in this period were usually built from the apse end. For Franciscan beati buried by screens, see Cooper, In medio ecclesiae (above, n. 1), 183–8. In San Francesco al Prato, Beato Ventura's later shrine may have been placed close to the screen — see above n. 59 and Fig. 3.

⁸⁴ The conventual buildings were located behind the apse while the southern side of the church faced the meadow from which the church took its name. Today the door into the transept is obscured by the Oratorio di San Bernardino and the modern corridor to the Accademia di Belle Arti, but the aperture, together with accompanying steps, is recorded on the pre-Carattoli plan, BAP, ms 3297. It is worth noting that the shrine was placed to the liturgical north, the side of the church sometimes reserved for women. The post mortem miracles and Mariano's painting demonstrate that women enjoyed full access to the shrine.

⁸⁵ ASP, CRS, San Francesco al Prato, Serie miscellanea 34, no pagination.

⁸⁶ For the reconstruction of Saint Francis's tomb, see Cooper, In medio ecclesiae (above, n. 1), 164–73.

⁸⁷ Cooper, In medio ecclesiae (above, n. 1), 183–90.

⁸⁸ Alvarez, G. Bresciani, ‘L'arca e l'altare del Santo alla luce della fonti storiche e della recente ricognizione’, in Lorenzoni, G. (ed.), L'edificio del Santo di Padova (Vicenza, 1981), 258Google Scholar; McHam, S.B., The Chapel of St. Anthony at the Santo and the Development of Venetian Renaissance Sculpture (Cambridge/New York, 1994), 10, 140Google Scholar, nn. 48–50. The precise location of Anthony's shrine within the Santo is unclear at this date, although by 1350 it was in the left transept.

⁸⁹ It was also possible to celebrate Mass on top of the tomb — see McHam, The Chapel of St. Anthony (above, n. 88), 10.

⁹⁰ For Dominic's tomb, see Cannon, J., Dominican Patronage of the Arts in Central Italy c. 1220–c. 1320: The ‘Provincia Romana’ (Ph.D. thesis, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 1980), 169–75Google Scholar; Dr Canno n is currently preparing a fresh study of the Bologna shrine and other Dominican cults in Italy, and some of this material was presented in her paper ‘Founders and followers: the burial and commemoration of santi and beati among the Dominicans of central Italy’, delivered at the Association of Art Historians' Annual Conference, Edinburgh, 2000.

⁹¹ Humbert of Romans explained that the 1233 tomb moved Dominic's remains to a higher location (‘ad altiorem debito cum honor e transferre’); Monumenta Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum Historica 16 (1935), 424Google Scholar. Cannon, Dominican Patronage (above, n. 90), 170, suggested that the second shrine ‘was made of marble, reached some distance above floor level and had a flat top’.

⁹² The slightly earlier tomb of Cardinal Guglielmo Fieschi (ob. 1256) in San Lorenzo fuori le Mura, Rome, provides a similar example of the reuse of a sculpted antique sarcophagus in a burial arrangement.

⁹³ The possible influence of Egidio's stone coffin, together with the fourth-century ‘Stilicho’ sarcophagus in Sant'Ambrogio, Milan, on Nicola Pisano's reliefs has been discussed by Cannon, J., ‘Dominic alter Christus? Representations of the founder in and after the Arca di San Domenico’, in Emery, K. Jr and Wawrykow, J. (eds), Christ among the Medieval Dominicans: Representations of Christ in the Texts and Images of the Order of Preachers (Notre Dame (Indiana), 1998), 32, 44, n. 49Google Scholar. For a comprehensive survey of Nicola Pisano's knowledge of antique sculpture, see Seidel, M., ‘Studien zur Antikenrezeption Nicola Pisanos’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 19 (1975), 307–92Google Scholar. For the influence of the 1267 Arca, see Moskowitz, A.F., Nicola Pisano's Arca di San Domenico and its Legacy (University Park (Pennsylvania), 1994)Google Scholar.