Zuleika Murat, Jason Stoessel, Lo stendardo opistografo di Gentile da Fabriano: immagini, parole e melodie per i francescani

The intersection of visual art and musical notation in late medieval devotional painting represents one of the most sophisticated examples of multimedia religious experience before the modern era. This article focuses primarily on Gentile da Fabriano's double-sided processional standard of ca.1420, while also examining three related works that illuminate the broader phenomenon: Gentile's two Madonna and Child with Angels panels (Perugia and New York) and Taddeo di Bartolo's 1418 Madonna and Child with Angels (Cambridge, MA). Through combined art historical, musicological, and cognitive approaches—drawing upon both medieval theories of internal senses and modern neuroscientific findings on synaesthetic experience—this study argues that Gentile's 1420 standard represents a revolutionary "Franciscan reversal" that fundamentally transformed the relationship between earthly and celestial music in Christian devotional art.