In 1439 Abraham of Souzdal, a Russian bishop visiting Florence, was in the audience in Santa Maria del Carmine for the famous Ascension play, arranged by the members of the lay confraternity, the Sant’Agnese. Sitting in the body of the church, Abraham looked up and saw, on top of one end of the huge stone choir screen, a castle with towers and ramparts, and at the other a Mount of Olives. From here the ascending Christ was drawn up through celestial curtains to be united with God the Father, suspended ‘in a miraculous fashion’ in the far distance above the altar. Invisible ropes and pulleys and visible local children, ‘who represent angels with pipes and lutes and lots of tiny bells’, contributed to a spectacle that had been performed annually for at least 50 years.
It is a wonderfully evocative vignette, a glimpse into another world, and its place in Painted Glories is characteristic of Nicholas Eckstein’s oblique approach to one of the greatest treasures of the Florentine renaissance.
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