Roberta Cerone
Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
The frescoes in the lower church of the Sacro Speco at Subiaco closed the complex architectural history that during the 13th century, from the time of Pope Innocent III (1198–1216), saw the growth of the sanctuary created around the cave where St. Benedict of Norcia retired in the early 6th century.
The cycle with stories of the saint, signed by Magister Conxolus, has so far been considered by the critics only for its stylistic and formal characters in connection with the paintings in Rome and Assisi during the nineties of the 13th century. Starting from these acquisitions, the paper will analyse the selection and the display of the stories — one of the first cycle about the life of Benedict on such a large scale by the middle years of the Middle Ages, their iconography and their reading direction in relation to the holy stairs leading to the cave and in the broader context of the debate on new religious orders after the Council of Lyons (1274).
From this perspective, one can see significant parallel with the friars and, in particular, with the Franciscans who, just few years before, had glorified their founder in the famous basilica of Assisi. The similarities with the pictorial cycle of the upper church of San Francesco, in fact, seem to go beyond the stylistic point of contact already identified by the critics to include broader issues. The foundation of two churches also in Subiaco and the decoration of the lower church with the celebration of the founder at a time shortly after the frescoes in Assisi, can not fail to reveal a comparison — and perhaps of an antagonism — that existed between two entirely different types of common life: the traditional monasticism and new orders.
Moreover, the reinterpretation of the architectural phases of the cloister, a necessary prerequisite to the reading of the paintings, can propose a different reconstruction of the relationship between the two churches by assuming a change to the sanctuary path and to the system of access to the chapel of St. Gregory.