I’m especially attached to the Angelucci da Mevale, not only because they are the painters I studied for my art history thesis, but above all because they are the ones who frescoed the church of my home village in Umbria, Castel Santa Maria.
The Angelucci da Mevale worked mostly in central Italy, but most of their works have been destroyed or lost. Even in the church of the Madonna della Neve only a few fragments of their work survive: a violent earthquake almost completely destroyed the church, and neglect and time did the rest.
Despite the great misfortune of their works, in the small villages of Umbria and the Marche a few pieces remain that will help you discover their style and the importance of their contribution to this beautiful land.
Care to learn a little more about these painters?
Now I’ll explain why I decided to study their works and what makes them special.
Let’s go!
Why I studied the Angelucci da Mevale
At first I set out to study the Angelucci da Mevale because they were the ones who frescoed the church of the Madonna della Neve, the place I love most in the world. But then I realised that these “minor” artists of art history are truly very interesting.
Amid the great figures on whom rivers of ink have been spilt, we often forget that there were also artists of merely local fame, who nonetheless made their contribution to their territory.
Art history is not made only of geniuses, but also of artists who, with patience and constancy, handed down and personalised the technique of the great masters, helping to spread new trends even to the most remote places.
Who were the Angelucci da Mevale?
The Angelucci da Mevale were a family of painters active in southern Umbria and the Marche in the sixteenth century, authors of some beautiful and original works too.
As you’ll have guessed, this is not a single artist but a whole family, who often found themselves working together on the same commission. The Angelucci da Mevale are three in all: the father Gaspare, the elder son Camillo and the younger Fabio.
They came, as the name says, from Mevale, today a small hamlet of Visso, in the Marche, on the border with Umbria. They spent their lives painting frescoes and carving altarpieces with garish colours and soft forms, and they were very prolific artists, active for almost a century across the Valnerina, the Camerino area and the upper Spoleto valley.
Even so, very little of their work has come down to us. Even less after the 2016 earthquake.
Gaspare Angelucci da Mevale
Father of the other two, Gaspare received his training as a painter in Rome. It was there that he admired the masterpieces of Perugino, Pinturicchio, Raphael and Michelangelo.
He was a pupil of Lo Spagna (Giovanni di Pietro, one of the finest followers of Perugino and Raphael), and the scholar Pietro Pirri does not rule out that he was among Raphael’s assistants. His training was undoubtedly marked by the influence of the greatest artists of his time, so much so that Gaspare was the first to bring the novelties of Rome into the mountains of the Umbrian-Marchigian Apennines.
Besides being a painter, he was also a wood-carver: the contracts show that he handled both the making of the altarpieces and their frames. On the panel known as the “Pace casciana” is a signature that testifies to it:
GASPAR AGNELVTIVS DE MEVALE TERRA NVRSIAE VNA CVM CAMILLO EJVS FILIO DEI GRATIA PR(aese)NS OPVS FECIT ET PINSIT A.D. 1547
The inscription says that the artist, “together with his son Camillo”, made and painted the panel: that “made” underlines his role as a carver too.
What characterises his art?
The works of Gaspare Angelucci da Mevale feature massive, ruddy figures in vivid colours, always set in symmetrical, detail-rich perspectives. The classical theme is very present in the architecture he paints and often in the decorations too.
One of his finest panels had been made for the Collegiate Church of Visso and kept, with another Virgin and Child, in the diocesan museum of Sant’Agostino in Visso. Sadly, because of the 2016 earthquake, the work was moved to safety and now waits, in storage, for the situation to be resolved.
Gaspare worked a great deal with his elder son, who is not only named alongside him as an author but is also the most gifted of the three.
Camillo Angelucci da Mevale
Of Camillo Angelucci da Mevale we know almost nothing, except that he learned the trade from his father, with whom he worked from boyhood. Since his works are often dated, we can say he was active between 1540 and 1584 and produced a great many paintings, some unsigned, scattered among various mountain churches.
Being wood-carvers too, the Angelucci da Mevale probably produced numerous tabernacles and ornaments for the churches, besides the frescoes and altarpieces.
We know that Camillo worked in Mevale, in Cerreto di Spoleto, in Cascia, Norcia, San Pellegrino, Visso and many other towns. We find him alongside his brother in the decorations of many villages of the Valnerina and the Visso area, where the two met up again and again over several years.
Fabio Angelucci da Mevale
Fabio Angelucci da Mevale was the most prolific of the family, taking his works all across the Apennines between Umbria and the Marche.
Less gifted than his father and brother, he was active between 1568 and 1603. His most successful surviving work is the so-called Chapel of the Innocents in San Gregorio Maggiore in Spoleto. With his brother, on the other hand, he decorated the church of the Madonna della Neve in Castel Santa Maria, a piece of my heart.
His pupil, and the last exponent of the “Mevale school”, was Ascanio Poggini, perhaps a relative, who worked beside him in his final commissions.
The “cursed” works of the Angelucci da Mevale
There is, of course, no curse on the works of the Angelucci da Mevale: their real misfortune, if anything, was to have worked in a very seismic land like the Apennines between Umbria and the Marche.
Many of their works have in fact been lost to the earthquakes that have struck these areas. We know, for example, of an altarpiece carved by Gaspare in 1518 for the Blacksmiths’ Guild of Visso, which sadly has not come down to us.
The works in the church of the Madonna della Neve fade year after year: after the 1979 earthquake they were left exposed to the weather, and much of the fresco has by now detached from the wall, revealing the preparatory drawings. The niche of the church of Sant’Agostino in Norcia, on the other hand, has been buried under the rubble since 30 October 2016, the day of the earthquake that flattened half the Valnerina, including the basilica of San Benedetto in Norcia.
And the list, sadly, goes on. The slow reconstruction of these mountain churches is still under way, and with it the hope of one day seeing the works now shut in storage back on display.
Despite the enormous losses, a few works by these prolific authors still survive, bearing witness, we hope for many years to come, to their style of brilliant colours, sweet, chubby faces and countless details.
And you, had you ever thought about how many small great artists are hidden in the churches of the villages we pass through in a hurry?
