In 1513, Julius II approved the erection of an oratory to house a miracle-working trecento fresco of the Virgin and Child, originally situated in a wayside aedicule near Tavernelle, in the diocese of Città della Pieve. The Madonna di Mongiovino soon acquired a prodigious following and by 1524 an ambitious sanctuary church was raised on the site. The structure was built on a centralized plan, in keeping with many similar Marian shrines erected between the end of the fifteenth century and the middle years of the cinquecento, including S. Maria delle Carceri at Prato and S. Maria della Consolazione at Todi. At Mongiovino, two identical facades, each with an entrance portal, were placed on the cross-axis, suggesting the need to facilitate the movement of a large number of devotees. The popularity of the shrine is confirmed by its continued embellishment through the sixteenth century, as the once-lowly image was given an increasingly prestigious setting. My focus in this paper is the Counter-Reformation framing of this late Medieval image, which saw not only its installation on an elaborate, gilded tabernacle altar, but also its ‘completion’ to incorporate the figure of God the Father. The image was now additionally framed by a fresco cycle of the life of the Virgin, in a chapel separated from the main space of the church by a highly unusual arcaded screen adorned with sculptural figures. These later interventions were designed not only to honor this particular image, but also to clearly underline the Virgin’s broader importance to the Catholic faith. This new setting, which is both sophisticated and archaizing, and includes frescoes by that go-to interpreter of the Tridentine decrees on images, Niccolò Circignani, provides an intriguing encapsulation of Counter-Reformatory concerns.

The cancellation of the Assumption procession in Rome in 1566 during the pontificate of Pius V altered the ritual topography of the city, removing holy images like the Lateran icon of Christ from an annual contact with local inhabitants. With the construction of the Scala Sancta under Sixtus V, the Lateran icon and the Sancta Sanctorum were reframed as a destination for pious pilgrims and were established as the inner core of an elaborately designed architectural reliquary. This paper will examine how image, site and holy object were integrated to engage and edify the viewer through the particular spatio-temporal experience of climbing the Scala Sancta. The reframing of the Christ icon through ritual performance allowed viewers to physically reenact the Passion.  The establishment of Rome as a New Jerusalem, already expressed in the decoration and contents of the medieval Sancta Sanctorum, could be viscerally experienced through late sixteenth-century devotional practice.