Flaminio Allegrini, i Barberini e un libro. Gli affreschi del chiostro della chiesa dei SS. Cosma e Damiano

Recent restorations of the seventeenth-century paintings in the cloister of the church of SS. Cosma e Damiano in Rome gave the occasion for this research. The paintings date to a renovation of the church in which the Barberini family was involved, in particular Francesco Barberini, a protector of the Third Franciscan Order who supported the Costituzioni Urbane (1638) giving the Order their own rules. The article argues that the pictorial decoration in the cloister depicting the history of S. Francis of Assisi was commissioned to celebrate the Third Franciscan Order which had managed the church since 1512. The paintings include a striking panel – unusual in representations of Francis’s history – depicting the investiture of St. Lucio, the first Tertiary, flanked by St. Margherita of Cortona, St. Elisabeth of Hungary, St. Louis IX and, probably, St. Yves of Brittany, all saints venerated especially by the Third Order. Furthermore the panel with the delivery of Franciscan rule to St. Francis contains an iconographical “enigma”, typical of baroque culture. The text of the book given by the pope to St. Francis reports the initial approval of Tertiary order by pope Nicholas IV as well as confirmation of the Order by pope Urban VIII Barberini (Costituzione Urbane). Furthermore, an iconographical analysis reveals that the portrait of the pope giving Francis the rule actually depicts Urban VIII surrounded by his “cardinal nepoti”. The panel confirms the commission of the Barberini family, the iconological exaltation of Tertiary Order and the painter, Flaminio Allegrini, who executed the decoration between 1638 and 1641.