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The Making of Assisi: The Pope, the Franciscans, and the Painting of the Basilica. By Donal Cooper and Janet Robson. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press. 2013. Pp. xii, 296 with 60 color illus. $75.00. ISBN 978-0-30019571-2.)
Specialist scholars, interested students, and passionate readers alike will warmly welcome the publication of this handsomely illustrated, elegantly written, and excellently researched book. As the frescoes of Assisi are amongst the most important (and most studied) Italian artworks of all times, the risk of producing yet another monograph on the subject was extremely high. Cooper and Robson, however, take a fresh perspective, focusing on patronage and iconography and wisely leave aside the exhausted attribution debate over the authorship of the paintings. The approach itself is not new: indeed it is openly indebted to the seminal studies of Alistair Smart and Gerhard Ruf (as well as to the more recent...