Descrizione

78 pages. Color and b&w illustrations. Paperback. Collana: Problemi di critica antichi e moderni, 6. GOOD, 2 PEN STROKES. From the back cover: Recent discoveries and excavations still in progress in the province of Varese - a few kilometers from Castiglione Olona (a small medieval town, famous for the frescoes by the Tuscan painter Masolino da Panicale and for a cluster of buildings of the fifteenth century) are revealing another center of no lesser artistic and archeological value, Castelseprio. One of its major assets is a cycle of frescoes prior to the eleventh century: its high quality and the challenging problem of its date ackowledge it as the most interesting remain of medieval painting of that period in the West as well as in the East (Graber). It could perhaps be the key to the major problems of this most obscure period of art. From the height of Castelseprio, with the Alps as a background, tourists enioy the surprise of discovering a picturesque ensemble of ruins, screened by romantic woods, a pleasant contrast to the areas of booming industrial development, through which the road to Castelseprio leads.