Icon of the Virgin (11th century ?)
This icon, which was painted in tempera, was highly venerated because it was believed that St Luke had painted it. A lost document apparently recorded that the Emperor Frederick I gave it to Spoleto after the peace of 1185. The the earliest documentation of its presence in the Duomo dates to 1291.
The cannot be viewed directly,
but it is enclosed in a reliquary (see below). The Virgin is shown at half-length. The inscription MP OY
identifies her as the Mother of God. She looks to the right and holds
a scroll that contains the Greek text of a dialogue in which she pleads
with Christ for the redemption of mankind. The icon was almost
certainly paired originally with another of Christ Antiphonites (Christ
who answers). Scientific analysis has shown that it has been damaged
by fire and (possibly as a result) has been cut down in size.
Bishop Cesare Facchinetti commissioned the present reliquary (1674) to replace an earlier one that is now lost. A sketch of it in the Biblioteca Vallicelliana, Rome records that it was commissioned in 1396.
The icon was removed from its reliquary for examination in 1956, at
which point an inscription was found that identified the person who
commissioned it as Irene Petraliphina. She was a descendant of Peter
Aliphas, a soldier from Alifa in Campania, who entered the service of
the Byzantine Emperor Alexius I Comnenus
in 1085. The icon was probably painted in Constantinople at about that
time.
The icon has long been at the centre of the celebration of Spoleto's most important religious holiday, the Feast of the Assumption (15th August). Examples of the its continued importance in relatively recent times include the following:
When Pope Pius VII was en route to Rome from Venice in the difficult circumstances of 1800, he stopped at Spoleto to venerate the icon.
It was taken in procession in 1856 at the end of an epidemic of cholera. Among those that had died in the epidemic was the sister of the man who was later canonised as St Gabriel Possenti. He was moved to take religious vows during this procession.
In the Jubilee year (2000) it was taken in procession throughout the diocese over a period of ten days.
The icon features in a smaller procession for a few days each August, culminating in a solemn procession from San Gregorio Maggiore to the Duomo on 14th August. It is then displayed from the portico of the Duomo on the following day, the Feast of the Assumption.
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