BERLINGHIERI, Bonaventura

(b. ~1210 Lucca, d. 0 ?)

The Berlinghieri were a family of Italian painters active at Lucca in the 13th century. Berlinghiero Berlinghieri, the founder of the family, is called ‘Milanese’ in a document of 1228, which also mentions three sons, Marco, Barone, and Bonaventura. He is not otherwise known, but a painted Crucifix (now in the Lucca Pinacoteca) signed ‘Berlingeri’ without Christian name is attributed to him. A Crucifix in the Accademia, Florence, is also sometimes assigned to him.

Bonaventura, the most talented of his sons, is known chiefly for his signed and dated altarpiece in the church of S. Francesco at Pescia (1235), which with its combination of solemn images and homely detail has been regarded as one of the most original, as it is one of the earliest pictorial representations of Franciscan ideas. The Scenes from the Life of St Francis in Sta Croce, Florence, and the St Francis receiving the Stigmata in the Accademia, Florence, have also been attributed to him.

Madonna and Child with Saints and Crucifixion

From the beginning of the 13th century the Berlinghieri, a family of painters (Berlinghiero and his sons Barone, Marco and Bonaventura), were working in Lucca. They were influenced by the new wave of Byzantinism which reached the peninsula after the capture of Constantinople by the crusaders.

The painting represents one of the earliest surviving examples of the ‘Eleusa’ Virgin, the ‘Affectionate Mother’, an iconographic model that was first used for portable household altars although it subsequently became increasingly po[ular and widespread until the end of the fourteenth century, being well suited to the emotional tendency expressed by Gothic art. Bonaventura Berlinghieri instils a liveliness into the figures and objects with a refined, almost miniaturist technique. There is, however, a clear reference to Byzantine models which allow the artist to express his lyrical mysticism.

The painting comes probably from the workshop of Berlinghieri and it is dated variously to the second half of the 13th century.

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St Francis

Bonaventura was one of the three painter sons of Berlinghiero Berlinghieri, a painter active between 1215 and 1242 in Luca. The painting of St Francis is one of the earliest altarpieces dedicated to the saint who was canonized in 1228. The Berlinghieri family exerted considerable influence on Florentine painting before Cimabue.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 33 minutes):

Michael Haydn: St Francis Mass

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