OUR LAND HAS BEEN
SOWN MORE THAN A THOUSAND TIMES...
History of the Abbey
of Santa Maria in Valdiponte
The Abbey of S.Maria Valdiponte in Corbiniano, known as Montelabate was founded in the X century by monks of the Benedictine Order and reached its maximum splendor in the XII century.
The first church was built on a pre-existing Roman temple in ruins.
Of the approximately one hundred Benedictine Abbeys in Umbria, it was certainly one of the most important and effective in affirming the Rule and in the reconstruction of the “civil concert” after the collapse of the Roman Empire and the centuries of barbarism that followed.
To the Abbey, it was entrusted, with bequests, the possessions on thirty villages and twenty guard castles, contributing powerfully to the development of the surrounding area.
During the XI century the monastery reached the apex of its power, that was based on a noticeable landed estate and on the lordly type of authority exercised over large territories.
In XIII century church and cloister were rebuilt, equipped with valuable works of art, frescoes and five panels painted in the first half of the fourteenth century.
Anyhow, it was in this phase that the first signs of a crisis started to appear which resulted in the introduction of the commendatory regime in 1405. A community of a few monks remained there until 1602, when the Abbey was transformed into the center of a vast farm.
In 1749 at the Abbey arrived Cistercensian monks that remained there up until Italy’s Union, when the complex was expropriated and put up for sale.
Owner of the Abbey and an extended farm all around is the Fondazione Gerolamo Gaslini di Genova.
The Fondazione has the sole purpose of “supporting, with the income deriving from the management of the huge assets donated by the Founder, the strengthening and scientific research of the Giannina Gaslini Children’s Hospital”.
Over the past 10 years, development projects have been implemented with more than 40 mil. euros resulting from the management of assets of which Montelabate represents a small part.
Abbey’s visit allows to the attentive visitor/listener to clearly feel the echoes of the past, both historical and cultural.
Thus we understand “… the prodigious bond between the ages, the bond of what is alive today with what was alive and is no longer alive, with what still must be.” (Vasilij Grossman May good be with you! The Sistine Madonna).
What to see
THE CLOISTER
The first one, as written on one of the capitals, was finished under the Oratore abbot (1205-1222), while the second was added in the last decades of XIII century.
However, the existence of a cloister has already been documented since 1195, and given that parts of salvaged columns dating back to the IX-X century were used for the construction of the current one, it is conceivable that there was a more ancient cloister previously.
THE CRYPT
In a niche of the crypt there are some fragments of a fresco dating back to the beginning of the fourteenth century which probably depicted a Virgin and Child. The abbot who commissioned the fresco can still be seen kneeling.
CHAPTER ROOM
The environment still preserves important frescoes attributed to the painter called "Maestro di Montelabate", protagonist of Perugia’s painting of the late thirteenth century. In them are represented: St. Benedict, a Virgin with Child, the client kneeling, the Crucifixion with the Virgin and St. John.
There is also a small mullioned window whose reuse column dates back to the oldest phase of the Abbey.
THE CHURCH AND ITS FIFTEENTH CENTURY ALTARS
The church with a single nave, divided into three bays and with a polygonal apse, follows the model of the Upper Basilica of Assisi. The portal and the rose window on the façade are attributed to the workshop of the "Maestro embroiderer", so called due to his marked propensity for decorative richness, which worked on the portal of the lower basilica of Assisi.
Since 1300s the church hosted important paintings of Meo da Siena and his followers, today kept in National Gallery of Umbria. The two lateral, one painted in 1488 by Bartolomeo Caporali, and the other attributed to Fiorenzo di Lorenzo of 1492, represent a Virgin and Child with Saints and a Crucifixion.
The saints depicted, among which San Sebastiano and San Rocco stand out, were those usually invoked against the plague.
THE MOST ANCIENT REPRESENTATION OF THE CITY OF PERUGIA
The latter is depicted holding a small image of the city of Perugia, the oldest known at the moment. The panel is currently in the National Gallery of Umbria.
