Le vie del Gotico in Abruzzo

The book reconstructs the development of the figurative arts in Abruzzo from the central decades of the 14th century to the first half of the 15th century, pivoting on the work of the ‘Maestro di Beffi’ – so named by the famous Triptych in the Museo Nazionale d'Abruzzo – identified by the author with the documented Leonardo di Sabino da Teramo, a painter resident in Sulmona from 1385 and active there until 1435. His early transfer to inland Abruzzo in the footsteps of the painter Antonio d’Atri and his close relations with the goldsmiths of Sulmona determined the late Gothic flowering of the regional pictorial language. In the work of the ‘Master of Beffi’, active on panels and in frescoes, as an illuminator and as a painter of wooden statues, the two main lines of 14th-century figurative production in Abruzzo – that of the Adriatic and that of Spoleto – converged, to which an autonomous dignity of 'school' must be acknowledged overall. The success of the pictorial formula devised by the 'Master of Beffi' – boldly expressive and eccentrically decorative – is also demonstrated by the appreciation received by his pupils and collaborators, among whom are the amazing 'Master of the Caldora Chapel' and the goldsmith Nicola da Guardiagrele, both of whom were able to obtain commissions even beyond the borders of the Kingdom of Naples.