Resumen de Franciscan choir enclosures and the function of double-sided altarpieces in Pre-Tridentine Umbria
Franciscan churches in Umbria and their double-sided altarpieces offer vital new evidence for the understanding of Italian church design. Uncertainties around the function and setting of double-sided altarpieces are bound up with the larger issue of the transition from pre-Tridentine to post-Tridentine liturgical layout. The writer considers whether there is convincing, widespread evidence for choir enclosures in the apses of Franciscan churches before the 15th century, as Henk Van Os supposed from the early Minorite predilection for double-sided altarpieces. Finding that retrochoirs were common in Umbria from the 13th century onward, contrary to everything known of liturgical practice elsewhere in Italy outside Rome, he discusses how double-sided altarpieces functioned in relation to a retrochoir layout. He concludes that this Umbrian anomaly betrays both a pervasive pluralism and a surprising degree of experimentation in Italian church layout throughout the medieval and Renaissance periods.
