Miracle of Saint Peter

This fresco depicting the Miracle of Saint Peter by Cimabue, painted in the Upper Church of the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi around 1277-1280, is part of one of the most ambitious fresco cycles in the history of Western art. Cimabue, the greatest Italian painter before Giotto, was entrusted with the decoration of the transept and apse, where he created powerful scenes from the lives of the apostles and the apocalypse. The Assisi frescoes, though severely damaged by time and the 1997 earthquake, represent the moment when Italian painting began to break free of Byzantine conventions.

Executed in true fresco with secco finishing on the walls of the Upper Church, the painting demonstrates Cimabue's revolutionary approach to spatial depth and dramatic expression. The monumental figures and atmospheric perspective, though now darkened by chemical degradation of the white lead pigments, reveal an unprecedented naturalism in Italian medieval painting.