Visconte and Landmann, an Italian team whose works include The Genius of Leonardo
, train an almost otherworldly eye upon the late-12th/early-13th–century saints Clare and Francis of Assisi in a joint biography heavily weighted toward Francis. Landmann's paintings dominate the spreads. Highly stylized, they will either fascinate or deter readers; few will have neutral reactions. The figures are elongated, their skin bronze in some spreads and green in others, their features severely sculpted and their overlarge heads unnaturally tilted toward the sky. Flat picture planes, groupings of figures and lavish use of gold recall sacred art of the period just prior to that in which Giotto immortalized Francis. Meanwhile, the occasional blue-faced angels and a landscape more like a haunted desert than like Umbria confer a strictly contemporary feel. The text includes most of the familiar facts about Francis's spiritual growth (the youth leaves his father's wealth and founds an order of mendicants) and relays the legends about his preaching to the birds and taming the wolf of Gubbio. Visconti adds less celebrated items, too, e.g., that Francis created the first live Nativity scene. Clare enters the story chiefly where she intersects with Francis, and girls in particular may wish to hear more about her, or to know why Francis gets to travel freely while he has Clare enter a convent, "to live [there] forever, withdrawn from the world." Two contrasting translations of Francis's "Canticle of Brother Sun" finish the volume. Ages 5-up. (Feb.)
