Donal Cooper and Janet Robson have given scholars, students, and general enthusiasts a long-needed tool for understanding and appreciating the decorative program in the Upper Church of the Basilica at Assisi. For decades, art-historical literature on the famous fresco cycle depicting the life of St. Francis focused almost exclusively on the Giotto/non-Giotto attribution question. What little had been published concerning the basilica’s patronage and iconography was either written in German or Italian and thus inaccessible to many, or else treated only particular themes within its decoration. This is not another book on Giotto at Assisi (thankfully). Instead, the authors successfully synthesize and reach beyond previous studies to present a detailed and nuanced picture of the Franciscan ideological context underscoring the basilica’s innovations.

Cooper and Robson first establish this context by examining the patronage of the Upper Church by the Franciscan Pope Nicholas IV, elected in 1288. Questions regarding the connections between St. Francis’s basilica and Nicholas’s sponsorship of artistic projects in Rome, as well as speculation as to the involvement of local friars in the planning of the decorative program at Assisi, occupy the first part of the book. In a welcome effort to get away from previous arguments about attribution, the authors emphasize the involvement of patrons and local friars over that of artists in determining the basilica’s decorative program. Cooper and Robson are careful to qualify this approach, however; they by no means wish to discount the agency and collaboration of artists, but their interests lie elsewhere. They then turn to an extended analysis of the St. Francis fresco cycle in terms of the intellectual and theological ideas it presents and provokes. Relying on previously published evidence (including that presented by Cooper and Robson in an earlier series of articles), the authors note that the dating of the nave frescoes must be restricted to between May 1288 and May 1297. This means that the St. Francis cycle predates Giotto’s Arena Chapel frescoes of 1306, and thus the Assisi cycle is innovative and to be celebrated in its own right.

In their introduction, Cooper and Robson carefully map out the volume’s argument. Orienting the reader to the involvement of Nicholas IV at Assisi, the authors most usefully provide for the first time English translations of the two Reducentes ad sedulae bulls Nicholas sent to the Sacro Convento at Assisi in May of 1288. These letters set in motion ambitious plans for the decoration of the Upper Church. This discussion of Nicholas’s sponsorship of the Assisi project leads into chapter 1, in which the authors rightly assert that the project for the Upper Church at Assisi must be understood alongside concurrent papal renovation projects in Rome, particularly at Santa Maria Maggiore and San Giovanni in Laterano. Innovative iconographic programs in mosaic at both churches promoted the Franciscan Order as a new apostolate and central to the Christian faith.

In chapter 2, Cooper and Robson turn to the links between Rome and Assisi. The authors helpfully distinguish between Nicholas’s sponsorship of the Assisi project and his actual involvement, noting that the curia never actually visited the Sacro Convento while Nicholas was pope. Instead, the friars at Assisi were most likely those responsible for the planning of the decoration. Although direct evidence for this agency is scant, Cooper and Robson introduce some of the personalities that may have been involved, and they paint a picture of a sophisticated intellectual community more than capable of planning the innovative decorative scheme.

Chapters 3 and 4 serve as an extended prelude to the discussion of the nave fresco cycle. Cooper and Robson dedicate chapter 3 to the decoration of the Upper Church from its construction until 1288. Here they offer an extremely useful treatment of evidence for the position of panel paintings and church furnishings prior to the painting of the nave. They also briefly survey the stained-glass program and Cimabue’s frescoes in the transept. Like others, Cooper and Robson date Cimabue’s cycle to ca. 1280, connecting it to the papacy of Nicholas III. In chapter 4, the authors provide an overview of the planning of the nave program, acknowledging previous scholarship and the cycle’s connections to visual precedents and textual sources.

Chapters 5 through 7 offer an extended iconographic discussion of the St. Francis cycle. Organizing this analysis thematically rather than sequentially allows the authors to argue several important points about the cycle. The foremost is that the frescoes emphatically assert that Francis is an alter Christus. This idea is of course not new in itself; scholars have long recognized that the cycle is based on Bonaventure’s Legenda maior of Francis (1263) in which the saint’s biography is manipulated to mirror the life of Christ. What Cooper and Robson do, however, is to uncover a myriad of potential theological nuances that contribute to this theme within the frescoes’ visual biography of Francis. The authors also point to other Franciscan literary sources besides Bonaventure, arguing persuasively for their influence on the iconographic program. Such sources allow for the broader understanding of Francis as he was promoted in the late thirteenth century, when the order was, arguably, at its height in terms of power and prestige. Francis is thus more than the alter Christus—he is a church reformer and a model friar as well as a mystical embodiment of Christ for the age.

The arguments in the final chapters depend on careful visual analysis not only of the frescoes themselves but also their relationship to one another on the walls of the church. Most of the time, this tactic is successful. Clear visual connections between the frescoes allow for appropriate typological interpretations: these connections can be seen between adjacent images, although in many cases scenes placed at diagonals speak strongly to one another. For example, on the counter facade of the church, Francis’s kneeling posture in the scene of the Miracle of the Spring closely mirrors that of Christ in the Ascension scene placed diagonally to its right. These comparisons can also be less convincing, particularly when the viewer is supposed to associate frescoes in separate bays divided by large bundles of columns, as in the quartet of images depicting, respectively, Francis receiving the Stigmata, the Death of Francis, and the Crucifixion and Lamentation. Thematic links are obvious here, but whether one would actually notice them while contemplating the frescoes is another matter.

Cooper and Robson acknowledge such difficulties. The building structure itself must have presented more than one such challenge for the designers of the program tasked with mapping the life of Francis alongside that of Christ in such a complicated manner. One must also assume, as Cooper and Robson indicate, that the frescoes spoke differently to different audiences; a learned friar might be capable of linking Francis with, for instance, Noah in a way that the average layperson might not. Yet on the whole Cooper and Robson demonstrate convincingly that the visual manipulation of scenes and compositions is capable of generating layers of meanings and associations, rewarding a lifetime of repeated looking.

Cooper and Robson’s accessible text is accompanied by abundant high-quality illustrations, and its authors have doubtless paved the way for much further scholarship on Nicholas IV and the Franciscans at a pivotal moment in the history of art. Concisely and clearly written, this volume is likely to be the standard work on Assisi for years to come.