Cappella delle Reliquie (1540)
This chapel stands on the site of the tribune of San Primiano, and the crypt of this ancient church survives below it. The chapel was initially known as the ""sacrastia nove della cona" and was built to provided a fitting location for the icon of the Virgin. This was displayed in the tabernacle at the centre of the back wall until 1668, when it was translated to the Cappella della SS Icone.
By 1711, the chapel was known as the Capella delle Reliquie because it housed a number of reliquaries that Cardinal Fausto Poli had donated to the Duomo in 1641. (Poli, who came from Cascia in the diocese of Spoleto and was close to Pope Urban VIII, made the donation two years before he became a cardinal.)
The original relics were kept in in carved,
inlaid wooden chests (1545-540 by Giovanni Andrea di Ser Moscato, Damiano di
Mariotto and Lorenzo Ciampichito. The front panels contained painted figures of prophets and sibyls by Francesco Nardini. The chests were dismantled in the 1930s and their front panels were used to line the walls.
The chapel now contains one of only two surviving autograph letters of St Francis on a free-standing reliquary to the right of the entrance.
Madonna and Child (early 14th century)
This polychrome wooden statue, which is a rare survival from the pre-Barberini era in the Duomo, is attributed to the Maestro di Fossa.
His autograph works from the church of Santa Maria ad Cryptas, Fossa
(in the province of Aquila) include an almost identical figure known as
the Madonna di Fossa, which is preserved in its original tabernacle in the Museo Nazionale d' Abruzzo.Inlaid panels (1485-7)
These panels at the corners of the back wall are the only surviving remnants of the choir in the apse, which was carved by Fr Giovanni da Verona. [When was the choir demolished ?] The surviving panels were inserted here in the 1930s.
Frescoes (1557)
The frescoes on the ceiling, which are by Francesco Nardini, depict scenes from the life of the Virgin.
St Vitalis is the only martyr from Spoleto that is included in the
Martyriology of Jerome. Hardly anything else is known about him except
for an inscription that was originally in the church of San Lorenzo,
Terzo della Pieve (a small settlement some 13 km north west of Spoleto
that seems to have been of roman origin).
Reliquary of St Vitalis (1597)
This reliquary contains the tibia of St Vitalis. The inscription records that Bishop Paolo Sanvitale commissioned it after he had translated the relics of St Vitalis from San Lorenzo, Terzo la Pieve to the Duomo in 1597. (Part of the inscription recording the discovery of the relics in the 4th century, which was translated at the same time as the relics themselves, is now in Sant' Eufemia.).
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