«Molti per mare tu sì liberasti». Immagini e culto dei beati Michelina da Pesaro e Galeotto Roberto Malatesta, dalle terre adriatiche alla Val di Chiana

Abstract

The article focuses on two frescoes depicting the Blessed Michelina da Pesaro (d. 1356) and Roberto Galeotto Malatesta (d. 1432) in the Franciscan church and convent of Lucignano Val di Chiana, Tuscany. Starting from the analysis of the context – with the attribution to Agostino di Marsilio – and of the long Latin and Vulgar inscriptions, the study addresses a wide review of iconographic and written sources, placing these two figures within a cultural tradition connected to two branches of Malatesta family. A Quattrocento hagiographic poem (Pesaro, Biblioteca Oliveriana), known to the historians but never linked to the Lucignano frescoes and never published in full so far, written by a Franciscan friar coming from Lucignano and active in the Pesaro convent, provides the reasons for the choice of depicting these ‘Adriatic’ subjects in a little town which was never affected by the Malatesta family business.