...Probably dates before March 1320. I have been researching Pietro Lorenzetti’s rare and beautiful 14th-century panel painting... I began in Assisi... Below the Crucifixion, there is a mural of the Virgin and Child with Saint Francis and Saint John the Evangelist, where the figures communicate with each other through gestures and intense eye contact. This mural was originally intended to give the impression of being an altarpiece, stood up against the church wall behind an altar table. In a clever illusion, it also seems that we are looking at real people having a conversation behind a balcony in real space. The Virgin’s halo even juts out over the border of the painted frame into our space. Lorenzetti’s interest in creating relationships between figures through gesture and facial expression in order to create a narrative is just one of the many similarities between the Assisi frescoes and the Ferens panel..... http://museumshull.blogspot.nl/2016/06/lorenzetti-in-italy-assisi.html