Tuesday 15 September, 5.00 pm: opening of the exhibition “Brother Sun, Sister Moon: 800 Years of St Francis”, curated by Maria Francesca Migliori and featuring original works by Giovanni De Angelis.
The exhibition “Brother Sun, Sister Moon: 800 Years of St Francis” stems from two fundamental aims: to pay tribute to the Patron Saint of Italy on the occasion of the eighth centenary of his death, and to introduce users and visitors to the Casanatense Library to part of the immense bibliographic and artistic heritage relating to the subject.
The exhibition route, comprising a total of nine display cases, is organised into five main themes: 1) Life; 2) The Stigmata and the parallel with Christ; 3) The Rule and Testament; 4) Francis the author; 5) Legacy.
All this is brought to life through the display of engravings, manuscripts and printed books, which present the figure of the Seraphic ‘Poverello’ of Assisi from the very first moments of his calling and through moments of immense spiritual depth, such as the appearance of the tangible signs of Christ’s Passion on his now weary and ailing body, which served to strengthen his all-encompassing love for God and for all His creatures. As is universally known, by virtue of the privilege of the sufferings of stigmatisation, he went so far as to refer to even death—so feared by most—as ‘Sister’ in the Canticle of the Creatures of 1225 (the Saint’s highest praise of the extraordinary beauty of creation and the first literary text in the Italian vernacular) …
(… Praised be You, my Lord, for our sister bodily death, from which no living man can escape.)
We wish to highlight, as best we can, the figure of this small yet great man (described by St Thomas in Canto XI of Dante’s *Paradiso* as ‘a Sun which, from the moment of its rising, has shone upon the world’), who was called to ‘rebuild’ the Church and was initially regarded as mad by everyone, due to his reckless act of stripping naked in a public square – except by a very young Chiara, whom Thomas of Celano would describe as: Clara nomine, vita clarior, clarissima moribus (Chiara by name, clearer in her life, most clear in her conduct).
During the opening reception, the photographer Giovanni De Angelis, creator of the ten photographs dedicated to the “Vie di S. Francesco” (The Ways of St Francis), which are on display as part of the exhibition, will speak.
The exhibition will run until 31 December, with guided tours led by Dr. Migliori on 11 October at 10.00 and 17 December at 16.30.
Free admission, booking essential: b-casa.promozione@cultura.gov.it