Pittori di confine. Nuove ricerche e scoperte sui trecentisti ‘umbri’ in Abruzzo

The exploration of the Abruzzo region continues to reveal evidence of the local activity of painters usually defined as Umbrian, not for their origin but for their figurative culture, marked by the revolutionary innovations of the Lower Church of San Francesco in Assisi. The discovery in L’Aquila of murals attributable to the Maestro della Croce di Trevi and the French-inspired Maestro del Crocifisso d’argento makes it possible to establish an earlier date and context for the spread of an individual version of Giotto’s language as found in Assisi. This characterised the entire course of fourteenth-century painting in L’Aquila, finding favour with both the Angevin court – through the Neapolitan activity of the painter Bartolomeo dall’Aquila – and the family of the Counts Mareri, the patrons of the Virgin and Child in Scurcola