BUDAPEST – A jewel among the wild grass? A Hungarian historian is convinced that patches of fresco in a Transylvanian church ruin are a rare medieval copy of a legendary masterpiece by Italian maestro Giotto.
The fragments found deep in the Romanian region are part of a 14th-century fresco reproduction of Giotto’s “Navicella” mosaic that used to adorn St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, Szilard Papp said in Budapest last week.
Only three other 14th-century copies of the work, depicting Christ walking on water before apostles in a boat, are known to exist, in Strasbourg in France and in Florence and Pistoia in Italy.
“This is definitely the fourth,” said Papp of the Transylvanian fresco, in the village of Jelna, 430 km (270 miles) northwest of the Romanian capital, Bucharest. Read more.