The cycle of frescoes on the theme of the End Times and the Last Judgment in the Orvieto Duomo is recognized as one of the major artworks of the High Renaissance in Italy. (The frescoes fill the right transept chapel often referred to as the San Brizio Chapel.) This work, begun around 1450 by Fra Angelico and completed 50 years later by Luca Signorelli, has received plenty of scholarly attention, including a book by a close friend of the Studio for Art, Faith & History, art historian Sara Nair James: Signorelli and Fra Angelico at Orvieto: Liturgy, Poetry and a Vision of the End Time.

Of enormous local significance is the earlier fresco cycle in the left transept chapel – the Chapel of the Holy Corporal – by Orvietan painter Ugolino di Prete Ilario, completed in 1364 with Eucharistic themes. Featured is the story of the Host that dripped real blood on the altar cloth in the pilgrimage church of Santa Cristina in nearby Bolsena, understood in Orvietan tradition as the miracle that prompted Pope Urban IV to institute the Feast of Corpus Christi in 1264 from the Pope’s residence in Orvieto.

Largely ignored, however, by scholars and visitors alike is the large fresco cycle behind the altar devoted to episodes of the life of the Virgin Mary.  Sara James is the first art historian to give careful attention to this cycle in a lengthy article in the academic journal Gesta (Spring 2016, v. 55, n.1, pp. 79-104). My brief essay here is neither a review nor a summary of Professor James’s article but a description of the cycle through eyes opened by James’s study to features transparently present in Ugolino’s visual narration.

With construction underway by 1290 on a new cathedral in Orvieto, Pope Nicholas IV dedicated the Duomo to the Virgin Mary, particularly in the aspect of her bodily assumption into heaven soon after her death. 

The Assumption was declared as a dogma of the Church only in 1950. It has no clear grounding in scripture, but early references to the idea occur by the 4th and 5th centuries. In fact, St. Juvenal – the Bishop of Jerusalem and understood to be the same Juvenal (to whom the beloved church of San Giovenale in Orvieto is dedicated) who evangelized southern Umbria and became bishop of Narni – is cited by St. John of Damascus as declaring at the Council of Chalcedon (451) to the Emperor Marcian, “who wished to possess the body of the Mother of God,” that Mary died “in the presence of all the Apostles, but that her tomb, when opened, upon the request of St. Thomas, was found empty; wherefrom the Apostles concluded that the body was taken up to heaven.”

In 1370 the administrators of the Duomo again turned to Ugolino di Prete Ilario to decorate in fresco the most important area inside a cathedral dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin, namely, the space surrounding the altar at the East end of the Duomo (the tribune or apse).

Cathedral records indicate that Ugolino and his workshop worked for over a decade on what remains the largest Marian cycle in western Europe, both in square footage (300 square meters) and in number of scenes (more than 30 captioned panels). The narrative culminates in the highest area of the East wall with five scenes: the Angel announcing to the aged Mary her impending death; her death (the Dormition); the disciples processing the dead Mary to her sepulcher; Jesus raising Mary from her tomb; and, in the high arch above the central window, her Assumption into heaven witnessed by the disciples. Directly above the Assumption in the triangular space of the ceiling vaulting is the Crowning of Mary by her Son.

Arranged in a left-to-right U-pattern on two registers circling the lower and larger area of the apse are scenes from the life of the Virgin. Included are the beloved episodes from the apocryphal accounts of the young Mary, featured in most of the Marian cycles. Her miraculous birth to her aged parents Anna and Joachim fills the lowest register on the north wall (the left side, facing the altar). Mary’s entrance into the Temple as a young girl and her marriage to Joseph are depicted at the bottom of the east wall. The Annunciation and the Visitation, the Nativity and the Adoration of the Shepherds and of the Magi, the Presentation of baby Jesus in the Temple, and the Flight into Egypt all find their place in the Ugolino’s cycle.

But Ugolino’s narration of Mary’s life contains some strikingly a-typical elements. Viewers familiar with other Marian cycles (such as Giotto’s in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padova) may notice an unusual attention not just to the sanctity of the Virgin herself but, as Sara Nair James writes, to “intimate glimpses” of the holy family’s daily life, of the “tenderness of human interactions” involving Jesus’s adoptive earthly father Joseph as well as Mary.

In fact, most unusual in a cycle devoted to Mary is the strong role of Joseph, often placed center stage by Ugolino. Joseph’s high profile in the Duomo cycle is perhaps not entirely surprising, given the veneration he received in Orvieto with the arrival of the mendicant orders in the 13th century, especially the Servites, whose annals for 1324 indicate a long-standing annual festival in honor of Joseph. Such veneration culminated in the official declaration of Joseph as patron saint of Orvieto in 1652.

For example, Ugolino’s Nativity scene focuses simply on Joseph and Mary kneeling before the newborn babe lying on the ground between them, but Joseph is the figure at the center of the visual field. In the scene of the Adoration of the Magi, Joseph in fact is placed at the apex of the pyramidal arrangement of the four men, his own hands raised in amazed adoration. In the Presentation in the Temple, Simeon holds the baby Jesus in front of the altar, while Joseph interacts with the priest behind the altar; in the background but at the center. Joseph again occupies a central position in the Circumcision, turning to Mary with a look of fatherly concern.

The sequence of four scenes on the lower register of the South wall begins with the Annunciation. But Joseph figures prominently in the other three episodes. In the Visitation the two husbands Joseph and Zacharias visually frame the embrace of Mary and Elizabeth in the center (although the men’s presence is not in the scriptural account). The last episode in this sequence depicts Joseph welcoming Mary into his house. Mary enters the scene on the left, but Joseph is the central figure, with some musicians on the right supplying festive accompaniment – nothing hugger-mugger here.

As for Ugolino’s interpretation of the Flight into Egypt (a much damaged section of the wall), Joseph leads the donkey, but the Flight itself occupies only half the space.  In the entirely unusual right half of the panel, Ugolino depicts the Holy Family at home, with Joseph the blacksmith working outside at his anvil and forge, while Mary seems to be “homeschooling” young Jesus inside!

Perhaps most surprising is Ugolino’s treatment of the story of Jesus at the age of twelve, having accompanied his parents to the Passover Festival in Jerusalem, but staying behind asking astute questions of the Teachers in the temple courts (Luke 2:41-52). The story is typically compressed into a single scene with Jesus seated in the center and the Jewish elders symmetrically-arranged on either side (as in Maitani’s depiction on the façade of the Duomo, and in Giotto’s cycle in Padova).