"There is a very great famine . . ."
Madonna della Spella, the Interior of the Chapel

The Madonna della Spella, on the road to the summit of Mount Subasio from the hamlet of Collepino in the comune of Spello, is a typical Umbrian votive chapel. Not exactly a church, it's a place where people have come for centuries to pray for specific graces, and leave their testimonials for graces received. The testimonials in these votive chapels most often take the form of an assortment of frescoes; where health is sought after disease or some horrible accident, the frescoes will frequently show the circumstances of the mishaps from which the votaries were delivered, and some chapels thus give us a very good feel for the diverse incidents of life in the countryside of the time.

Here, however, all the extant wall-paintings are essentially identical, and achieve a sort of magical effect by their repetition: the same depiction of Virgin and Child, most of them, like the two you see immediately above, against a backdrop of embroidered cloth, characteristic of the school of Foligno in the late Middle Ages. The sample to the right, and in detail below, lacks the damasked background, but is the best preserved.