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Pieve S. Maria di Valfabbrica:
The Interior

[image ALT: A rectangular hall about 15 meters long, leading to a small, plain modern altar. Two windows light the room; the side walls are plastered, with here and there some fragments of older paintings. It is a general view of the interior of the church of Pieve S. Maria in Valfabbrica, Umbria (central Italy).]

This barnlike hall is the result of some very functional 20c repairs. The new Franciscan-style truss-and‑beam ceiling and the solidly plastered walls prevent water from damaging the frescoes.

When we imagine what the church must have been in its best days! but most of the painting is irretrievably lost. Even the very few frescoes that remain, however, more than justify the expense of the restoration — to say nothing of the worship space, of course.

Leaving aside the many miscellaneous smaller fragments, most of them pretty much unreadable (almost everything on the left wall and then some), the art in the church falls into three main groups. I've broken them out separately, mostly to avoid burdening this page with dozens of slow-loading images:

[image ALT: A painting of a woman holding a child. It is one of several frescoes of the Madonna and Child in the church of Pieve S. Maria in Valfabbrica, Umbria (central Italy).]

[ 1 page, 5 photos ]

What would Italy be without Madonnas? Three of them, one of them very good.

[image ALT: A wall with some bits of fresco and the top of a tombstone. It is a detail of the church of Pieve S. Maria in Valfabbrica, Umbria (central Italy).]

[ 1 page, 6 photos ]

A rather disorderly chunk of wall, piling a pair of touching modern tombstones on top of a good medieval fresco: something here for the sociologist as well as the art historian.

[image ALT: The more or less naked body of a dead man on a table tilted toward the viewer. The table is draped in a thick patterned material, and next to the table, on the side away from us, are a woman, obviously in anguish, reaching toward the body, being restrained by two other women; also two men standing at some small distance from the women, their heads tilted to one side. It is a fresco of the Deposition of Christ in the church of Pieve S. Maria in Valfabbrica, Umbria (central Italy).]

[ 1 page, 2 photos ]

And finally, duly noted by the guidebooks, a Deposition of Christ that could even be by Cimabue: but a very beautiful painting, whoever created it.

Page updated: 30 Jul 04