Senate President Ignazio La Russa and Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli opened at Palazzo Madama the exhibition "St. Francis, Between Cimabue and Perugino," promoted by the Senate of the Republic in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture. The exhibition is housed in the Sala Capitolare of Palazzo della Minerva - home of the Senate Library - and features two exceptional loans, the result of the collaboration between the National Gallery of Umbria with the Sacro Convento of Assisi and the Seraphic Province of St. Francis: the Chartula, a parchment counted among the most important relics of the Saint, an autograph fragment of St. Francis, datable to 1224, and the effigy of the Saint painted by Cimabue that arrives from the Porziuncola Museum. Starting with these sacred objects, the itinerary continues with works by some of the greatest painters of the Middle Ages and Renaissance: Perugino, Benozzo Gozzoli, Taddeo di Bartolo, and Niccolò di Liberatore, in an evocative narrative aimed at restoring the evolution of the Saint's image in parallel with the ever-growing affirmation of the Franciscan cult. The exhibition opens to coincide with the close of the eighth centenary of the Stigmata of St. Francis (2024) and the beginning of the Jubilee Year (2025), coinciding with the eighth centenary of the Canticle of the Creatures (2025).