Praying Mantises in Grey Vesture: The Followers of St. Francis between Ideal and Praxis in Late Medieval Italy
- Lecture
Missal (detail), 1469. Bartolomeo Caporali (Italian, c. 1420–c. 1505), assisted by Giapeco Caporali (Italian, died 1478). Ink, tempera, silver and burnished gold on vellum (400 folios; 3 full-page illuminations; 31 historiated initials); 35 x 25 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund 2006.154
About The Event
The Caporali Missal, recently purchased by the Cleveland Museum of Art, is a liturgical book commissioned in 1469 and used for the celebration of Mass by Franciscan friars in the central Italian town of Montone. As a book facilitating prayer, it tells us something about the piety of the Franciscan friars who used it, the patronage which made it possible and the wider struggles for authentic vocational identity within the Order during the late fifteenth century. This lecture, presented by Father Michael Cusato, one of the leading historians of Franciscan history working in the United States today, is an attempt to place this precious book in its wider religious and historical context in the Late Middle Ages. Free; reception to follow.
This lecture is part of the Caporali Lecture Series, complementing the exhibition The Caporali Missal: A Masterpiece of Renaissance Illumination, on view February 17 – June 2, 2013. Co-sponsored by Cleveland State University.