A fresco by medieval master Cimabue in the Lower Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi has been restored to rich detail and luminous luster thanks to €300,000 in funding from luxury car manufacturer Ferrari. Our Lady in Majesty, also known as Madonna and Child, Angels and St. Francis, survived the 1997 earthquake that devastated Assisi, causing the collapse of the roof of the adjacent Upper Basilica and claiming the lives of four people.

Located in the northern transept, to the right of the church’s high altar, the Majesty was painted by Cimabue between 1285 and 1290. It is one of his most famous works because it contains one of the oldest portraits of St. Francis. Francis died in 1226. The oldest known depiction of him, a fresco in the Benedictine abbey at Subiaco, was created only two years after his death, but it is an abstract representation in the flat, formal Byzantine style, not an attempt to capture the appearance of the man. Cimabue created an actual portrait of St. Francis reputedly based on descriptions given to him by people who had known Francis personally, so it is the oldest surviving realistic depiction of him. The fresco is also famous for its innovative use of perspective, an important transitional moment between the hieratic Byzantine style and the naturalism that would flourish in the Renaissance.

The Majesty depicts Mary enthroned holding the Christ child on her knee. The throne is surrounded by four angels. To the right is St. Francis bearing the stigmata in his hands. Mary, the Christ child and the angels are idealized representations, serenely beautiful in perfect symmetry. Francis is skinny, his ears stick out (one of them swollen with the mumps) and his heavily lidded eyes have a care-worn expression rather than sublimely serenity of the heavenly countenances.

Restoration work began in January 2023. Conservators from the cultural heritage restoration company Tecnireco first studied the fresco with the latest imaging technology, using x-ray fluorescence and infrared spectroscopy to determine which parts of the fresco were original and which were later additions. The technology also revealed the original pigments used by Cimabue.

Once the analysis was completed, restorers removed thick deposits of atmospheric particles (dust, smoke, grime) and a coat of yellowing protective varnish applied in a 1973 intervention. They then focused on the adhesion of areas of flaking paint and gilding. The plaster layer was also re-adhered to the masonry.

To avoid painting over the original fresco, they replaced pigment that had become detached, especially azurite pigment used for the background, with neutral colours such as grey. “We have taken away all of the additions made over the centuries,” says Fusetti, adding that the painting had now regained its original luminosity. “What we now see is the original work.”

Since the 1997 earthquake, personnel from Tecnireco have been entrusted with cleaning all of the frescoes, which cover a surface area of 10,000 sq. m, once a year. Annual dusting will help keep Maestà di Assisi in good condition, Fusetti says. “We won’t need to restore it for another 60 or 70—maybe even 100—years,” he adds. “Future maintenance will be more affordable as a result.’

The details on the throne look stunning, the inlay highlighted by glowing gilding that you couldn’t see at all before the restoration. St. Francis’ scraggly beard takes on a whole new prominence too.

A gold ring from the 11th or 12th century with an unusual two-faced design has been discovered at Wawel Royal Castle in Kraków. The top of the ring is widened and flattened. It is engraved with two anthropomorphic figures, faces looking away from each other. This is the only example ever discovered of an early medieval Polish ring decorated with figural representations, let alone human faces. The few gold rings from the period that have been found in Poland are either undecorated or ornamented with simple geometric designs.

The ring is 1.5mm thick, 4mm in diameter with a circumference of 57mm. The bottom of the band is broken, but there does not appear to have been a great deal of gold lost. The overall shape and style of the ring is typical of this area of Poland, so it was likely produced locally for an elite member of the Piast dynasty court.

The royal castle on Wawel Hill towers over the historic center of Kraków. The earliest royal residence at the site was built by Mieszko I (r. ca. 960–992), the first king of Poland. He converted to Christianity in 966 and eight years after his death the first cathedral in Poland was built next to the royal castle on Wawel Hill. Polish kings would be crowned and buried there for centuries.

The early medieval castle was greatly expanded and modernized into a splendid Renaissance palace by the Jagiellonian dynasty kings (Alexander I, Sigismund I the Old and Sigismund II Augustus) of the 16th century. The court was moved from Kraków to Warsaw in 1609 and Wawel Castle fell into a slow decline that was violently sped up when it was sacked by Swedish troops during the Deluge campaigns (1648-1667). Come the partitions of Poland in the late 18th century, the devastated castle was repurposed as an army barracks for Austrian troops. Poland reclaimed it with its own independence in 1918 when it served both as residence for the head of state and as a museum.

The gold ring was discovered during an archaeological excavation under the Danish Tower, a residential tower on the east wing of the castle built in the late 14th century, but the ring predates construction of the tower. It was in the archaeological layer on top of the remains of an older stone structure that may have been a defensive rampart.

The ring will now undergo metal analysis that may provide more data about the composition and origin of the gold. When the scientific research is complete, the ring will go on display.

Archaeologists from the Déri Museum have unearthed a complete set of lamellar armor in an Early Avar grave near Ebes, northeastern Hungary. It dates to the first half of the 7th century and is only the second set of Pannonian Avar lamellar armor ever discovered largely intact and in its original position. The first was found in Derecske just 10 miles south of Ebes in 2017.

Believed to have originated from the Eastern Eurasian Steppe, the Pannonian Avar peoples invaded Eastern Europe in the 6th century and established a Khaganate that ruled over the Pannonian Basin until its defeat by Charlemagne’s son Pepin of Italy in 796. Their heavy cavalry was a key element of their success in battle, and lamellar armor was an essential part of the equipment of Pannonian Avar heavy cavalry. They were not military-issue, not uniforms. The officers had them custom-made to fit, and there is a wide range of types, sizes and shapes with different numbers of plates and different laces.

The grave was found in November 2023 during a preliminary excavation of a ten-hectare site on the outskirts of the village of Ebes. Two Avar cemeteries had been discovered earlier in the course of the excavation project, but this grave was solitary, not part of either of the cemeteries. The team first encountered the skeletal remains of a horse. Under the horse bones the set of armor was found, a wooden quiver with arrows, a bow and a sword placed atop the armor. The deceased was not buried wearing the armor, rather it was laid over him, then topped with his weapons and the horse of top of them.

The horse bones were removed in situ. The rest of the grave and its artifact assemblage were removed in a large soil block and transported to the museum for excavation in laboratory conditions to ensure the armor elements stay in their original configuration and so that any organic materials, even traces, can be detected in the soil. The weapons and armor are currently exposed on the surface of the block, but have not been fully recovered.

The meticulous micro-excavation is expected to take several more months. Archaeologists think there may be additional grave goods underneath the deceased that are not yet visible.

The remains of women buried with thick twisted bronze neck rings have been discovered in an 11th century cemetery near the village of Ostriv south of Kyiv, Ukraine.

The 11th-century cemetery is located about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Kyiv. Of its 107 graves, “most of the identified burials were deposed in wooden coffins,” Vsevolod Ivakin and Vyacheslav Baranov, both archaeologists at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, wrote in a paper they presented at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America, which was held Jan. 4-7 in Chicago.

The cemetery’s dead include both men and women. Some of the men were buried with weapons, such as axes, spearheads and swords, Ivakin and Baranov wrote. A few of the women were buried with elaborate neck rings, which “are found only on necks in female burials and were apparently a kind of social marker,” in this region at the time, Baranov told Live Science in an email.

An expedition by the Institute of Archaeology of Ukraine discovered the Ostriv graveyard in 2017. Between 2017 and 2022, excavations unearthed the 107 inhumation burials dating from the late 10th and 11th centuries. The unique nature of the graves was quickly apparent. Unlike the unusual funerary practices in the Kyivan Rus during this period, the graves were oriented south and west instead of north.

The deceased were laid in supine position (on their backs), with outstretched limbs. Traces of wooden coffins were found in most of the graves. The remains of funerary food offerings (chicken bones, eggshells) were found in the graves and in wooden buckets at the feet of some of the deceased. Some individuals were laid to rest with extremely rich goods: slate spindle whorls, jewelry, including the bronze neck rings and bracelets, pennanular brooches, cast bronze belt rings, cowrie shell bead necklaces, and weapons including battles axes, knives and spearheads.

The orientation and funerary furnishings were very similar to the practices of Western Baltic tribes, but the comparison was not exact. Most notably, the Western Baltic peoples typically cremated their dead, and none of the Ostriv graves were cremation burials. Buckets are also not typical of Baltic funerary traditions. Archaeologists hypothesize that these key differences may be attributed to restrictions placed on traditional funerary practices by the Christian dukes of Kyiv, primarily Volodymyr the Great (r. 980-1015) and Yaroslav the Wise (r. 1019-1054), and by the process of Christianization of the Baltic settlers of the region during the 11th century. A stone altar found in the cemetery could have been used for Christian or pagan rituals, or a mixture of the two.

Excavations at Ostriv (and everywhere else in Ukraine) are on pause for now due to the Russian invasion.