Judas and the Franciscans: perfidy pictured in Lorenzetti's Passion cycle at Assisi

In the southern transept of the lower temple of S. Francesco, Assisi, in the early fourteenth hundred Pietro Lorenzetti painted a powerful vision of death. (1) Alone, beneath an arch, a man hangs by dint of the neck from a made of wood beam. His straggling hair sticks to his face, the tendons swelling in his dislocated neck, and a tear in his lengthy tunic reveals a horrible mutilation: his intestines are spilling on the outside through his burst belly. The name [I]SCARIOT is inscribed beside the corpse. This is the Death of Judas (Fig. 1)

Its setting is the Passion round of years and the grisly subject matter consummately suits the artist's verismo phraseology The drama unfolds in three acts, each staged upon a different wall. Act 1 upon the west side of the barrel vault, contains five displays beginning at the top with the access into Jerusalem and ending with the Death of Judas (Fig. 2) Act 2 upon the other side of the vault, comprises the Flagellation, the Way to Calvary, and the Crucifixion. Act 3 upon the end wall, concludes the story, from the Deposition (bottom left) to the Resurrection (top right). This final succession distinct from the rest end its position, narrative sequence, and contemplative frame of mind is virtually a self-contained period (Fig. 3). (2)

The discursive narratives of the vault form sum of two units halves of a coherent whole, notwithstanding they have their subtle differences. Act 2 with its focus upon Christ's physical suffering and death, forms the emotional heart of the drama. It might be called the "true" Passion. Act 1 provides the introduction its tempo gradually accelerating as the momentous incidents of Holy Week progress. It also contains a substantial subplot: the life and death of Judas Iscariot, who appears in each of its five shows The Stigmatization of Saint Francis, inserted into the circle of time after Judas's suicide, functions as an intermezzo, encouraging us to diocese Judas's death as the dramatic curtain to Act 1 (Fig. 2) like a strong emphasis on Judas is extremely rare; this is the solitary Passion cycle in late medieval Italy to include him for a like reason often. (3) Eve Borsook has noted that "the unusual importance given to Judas in the scheme has not nevertheless been explained." (4)

Although the Lorenzetti round of years is not the only place in the basilica where Judas appears, it certainly marks the zenith of interest in him within the house of god Overall, the errant Apostle is depicted eleven times, and sole three of these images date from the duecento, compared with eight from the trecento. The earliest Passion displays in the apse windows of the upper meeting-house show Judas only in the Last tea and the Betrayal. (5) In the first fresco Passion revolution of time on the north wall of the nave of the lower meeting-house painted probably in the early 1260 (6) he does not appear at all. In the extensive revolution of time of the life of Christ painted in the nave of the upper meeting-house which dates from about 1288-95 (7) and includes four Passion spectacles Judas appears only in the Betrayal (there is no Last Supper) The trecento images are all in the lower church; to the five in the Lorenzetti circle of time we can add another sum of two units in the Magdalen Chapel (of which more below), all seven dating from the first sum of two units decades of the century. A coda was added in the 1360s: a Betrayal slott into the small space between the chapels of Saint Anthony of Padua and Saint Louis of Toulouse. (8)

The situation at Assisi is an art historical phenomenon in microcosm. During the late medieval period in Italy, the number of images of Judas increased exponentially. My investigation of the iconography has revealed 37 images from the twelfth hundred 65 from the thirteenth hundred then a mighty leap to 201 from the fourteenth hundred (9) This pattern can be explained in part by means of general factors: the accident of survival, the increase in the production of art from the mid-thirteenth hundred and the demand created by means of the new mendicant orders and their rapidly increasing numbers of churches.

on the other hand there is more to it than that. The story of Judas is inextricably bourn up with that of Christ, and particularly with Christ's Passion. The increase in the number of Judas images, therefore, is closely linked to a corresponding increase in depictions of the Passion. Not sole was the Passion represented more many times from the mid-duecento, but also revolution of times became longer and more descriptive, with an increasing emphasis upon Christ's sufferings. (10) Such images were created with the aim of eliciting an affective replication from the viewer; the adage that devotion could be aroused "more through what is seen than through what is heard" was coined in the thirteenth hundred by both Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint Bonaventura to justify images in churches. (11) The Franciscans played a lock opener role in these trends. (12) Affective Passion devotion was widespread by dint of the thirteenth century, and its foundations predate Saint Francis; (13) nonetheless, the extremity of Francis's imitatio Christi, culminating in his receipt of the stigmata, gave the Franciscans a unique claim to the appropriation of the crucified Christ. Anne Derbes has cogently argued that it was the Franciscans who were the leading promoter of Passion narratives in the next to the first half of the duecento. (14) They also disentangleed and disseminated new iconographies within the Passion that had special meaning for their have a title to order. A good example is the Stripping of Christ at the lower extremity of the cross, which, as Derbes has shown emphasized not alone Christ's humiliation but also his need (15) Franciscan writings, elaborating upon the old ascetic exhortation to "follow naked the naked Christ" by means of renouncing the world, frequently used nakedness as a metaphor for neediness (16) Hence, both the stripping of Christ and Francis's renunciation of his father by means of stripping off his clothes could be used by the agency of the Franciscans to exemplify their possess ideal of "nudissima paupertas." (17) Significantly, in the 1260 these sum of two units scenes were placed opposite each other in the nave of the lower house of god at Assisi.