Preaching to the Birds and Blessing Montefalco - Benozzo Gozzoli
Archival giclée
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Description
A 1452 fresco by Benozzo Gozzoli depicting Saint Francis preaching to birds and blessing the town of Montefalco.
This fresco, executed by Benozzo Gozzoli in 1452, forms part of the cycle depicting the life of Saint Francis of Assisi within the church of San Francesco in Montefalco, Italy. The composition presents two distinct episodes from the saint's life, unified by the expansive Umbrian terrain. On the left, Saint Francis addresses a gathering of birds, a scene derived from the Fioretti, which recounts his sermon to the creatures of the air. The birds are rendered with careful observation, their forms scattered across the foreground. To the right, the saint is shown blessing the town of Montefalco, accompanied by his followers. The town itself is depicted with architectural precision, reflecting the contemporary appearance of the settlement. The figures are dressed in the traditional Franciscan habit, their postures conveying a sense of quiet devotion. Gozzoli, a student of Fra Angelico, demonstrates a clear interest in the natural world and the integration of human figures into a wider environment. The sky, marked by horizontal bands of cloud, provides a backdrop for the rolling hills and the fortified walls of the town. The palette remains grounded in earth tones, with soft blues and ochres defining the atmosphere of the Italian countryside. This work captures the narrative clarity characteristic of the period, focusing on the interaction between the saint and the physical world he inhabited. The attention to detail, from the individual feathers of the birds to the masonry of the town walls, reflects the artist's approach to storytelling through visual observation.
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Each print is produced to order using 12-colour giclée printing on FSC-certified archival paper. Designed in Britain and printed at your nearest production hub to reduce waste and speed up delivery.
Preaching to the Birds and Blessing Montefalco - Benozzo Gozzoli
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- Dust gently with a soft, dry cloth
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Materials & Sizing
Museum-grade giclée on FSC-certified archival matte paper, with framed and canvas options.
- Paper sizes: A4, A3, A2, A1, A0 and B2 (50×70 cm)
- Canvas: XS (20×30 cm) to Large (60×90 cm)
- Frames: black, natural wood, dark wood or white
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Artist Biography
Benozzo Gozzoli
Gozzoli trained first as a goldsmith's apprentice under Lorenzo Ghiberti, whose Gates of Paradise doors for the Baptistery shaped his love of dense narrative and decorative precision. He then worked as an assistant to Fra Angelico, absorbing Renaissance spatial conventions without Fra Angelico's devotional gravity. Scholars have been blunt about his limitations: Ernst Gombrich called him a 'minor master' who applied new perspective methods 'gaily without worrying overmuch about their difficulty.' The Procession's rocky landscape still rises flat from bottom to top, indebted more to Ghiberti's bas-relief language than to Masaccio's pictorial space.
None of that troubled his patrons. The subject of the Magi was popular among wealthy Florentines precisely because it licensed the painting of costly brocades, gleaming gold, and thoroughbred horses in quantities that declared the patron's status. The Medici chapel, small enough that access felt like a privilege, was used for family mass and for receiving visiting ambassadors. The procession of kings served as a perfect backdrop for those audiences.
Gozzoli went on to paint extensive fresco cycles at Montefalco (1452, the life of St Francis) and at the Campo Santo in Pisa (from 1469, Old Testament narratives covering thousands of square feet). Neither matches the Medici chapel for concentrated ambition, but both confirm his command of large-scale narrative pageantry. He died at Pistoia in 1497, working almost to the end.
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