Virgin and Child. Medieval fresco, probably painted in the 1300s by a Sienese School painter. In the Chiesa di Sant’Alessandro, in Volterra, Tuscany, Italy. The fresco, now known as the Madonna del Cavallaro, is said to have been discovered by a horse in the 1700s.
Volterra, Tuscany, Italy: according to local legend and oral tradition, this medieval fresco of the Virgin and Child, now known as the Madonna del Cavallaro, was discovered by a horse. Stories of how the artwork was found in an overgrown abandoned chapel were handed down orally in local families and amongst generations of parishioners of the Chiesa di Sant’Alessandro (Church of Saint Alexander). They told of a 1700s farmer who noticed that his mare stopped and seemed to genuflect every time it passed a dense thicket just outside the city. The farmer cleared thick vegetation from the roadside and found a ruined ancient chapel in which the sacred image had been venerated by local people for hundreds of years. The fragmentary fresco, probably painted in the 14th century by an artist of the Sienese school, now takes pride of place on the south nave wall of the Chiesa di Sant’Alessandro, a simple, austere Romanesque church in Borgo Sant’Alessandro consecrated in 1120 AD by Pope Callixtus II. It was installed by the parish priest and poet Giovanni Villifranchi (died 1614). He was honoured on the 400th anniversary of his death, in 2014, when the Bishop of Volterra presided over a Compline evening prayer service before the Madonna del Cavallaro and a plaque commemorating Villifranchi was unveiled in the church’s external loggia. The story of the fresco’s discovery has been studied by academics and writers of the 19th and 20th centuries as an excellent example of the strength of oral tradition in Italian peasant culture. The legend is one of many based on sacred and fortuitous discoveries and on the belief that divinities might use signals - in this case to a horse - to indicate their presence.
Size: 2592px × 3872px
Location: Chiesa di Sant’Alessandro, Volterra, Tuscany, Italy.
Photo credit: © Terence Kerr / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
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