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Hermitage of Sant’Onofrio - The Coast of Ocenelli - Spoleto (PG)

It is located in an isolated place, close to a steep escarpment near a source. The hermitage of Sant’Onofrio, datable to the fourteenth century, was dependent on the parish church of Santa Maria in Rupino. It was visited in 1712 by Monsignor Carlo Giacinto Lascaris who defined it more than a church, a “chapel”. A hermitage made up of three damp rooms was attached to it. In the vicinity of the small complex there was a vegetable garden and a sacred spring "whose water was drunk by the people with devotion". The place was at the time inhabited by a hermit named Onofrio Ferretti from Spoleto.
The hermitage consists of an upper and a lower church, not communicating with each other, with separate entrances.
The upper church is accessed via a simple portal devoid of ornaments, a window opens on the right side, and on the left side there is another, now walled up.
The upper floor consists of a single small nave with a trussed roof. in the presbytery to the east, the entire wall is frescoed with a Crucifixion among the Saints. To the left of the crucified Christ there are the praying client, Sant’Onofrio, San Girolamo and Madonna, to the right, San Giovanni Evangelista and San Barnaba.
The work, dated 1408 and attributable to the anonymous Spoletino conventionally called Maestro del Calvari, is inscribed in a frame with molds and polychrome bands. At the bottom there is an inscription with the names of the Saints in Gothic characters. On the right wall there is a frescoed Death of Sant’Onofrio, almost illegible.

The lower church has no façade, leaning against the embankment, it is accessed through a small door on the right side with a round arch, because the main access placed in the opposite wall, is partly buffered and reduced to a window, on the left side another rectangular window opens, a third, a splayed single lancet window, opens onto the altar wall.
The hall that constitutes the lower church is covered by a vault with two slopes with a slightly acute arch.
On the left wall, before the partially walled door, you can see traces of frescoes that are no longer legible. After the small door there is a fresco of a depiction of Sant'Onofrio, then there is a fourteenth-century crucifixion, with iconography that recalls the "Holy Face of Lucca": the triunphans Christ is depicted with open eyes, with a serene and penetrating gaze, dressed in a tunic sleeve and with the royal crown. At his feet two very deteriorated figures can be seen, probably the Madonna and San Giovanni. Above, inserted in a floral motif decoration, the Agnus Dei is depicted. Above the window there is another depiction of Sant’Onofrio. The left wall is closed by a Saint Stephen with a dalmatic, a martyr's palm and the usual stone on his head as an iconographic attribute.
The altar wall is completely covered with 15th-century frescoes, framed by polychrome green, red and white bands and surmounted by foliage friezes. On the left there is an enthroned Madonna del latte. In the center a Crucifixion with at the foot of Christ Saint Mary Magdalene and at the sides the Madonna and Saint John the Evangelist. It is a work of taste similar to the Crucifixion of the upper church, but with a less gifted hand and a lively popular taste, attributable to an anonymous Spoleto of the early fifteenth century.
On the right there is a fresco of Sant’Onofrio with an angel who offers him the Eucharist. Above the sarcophagus altar, there is a splayed single lancet window. On the right, close to the wall of the presbytery, the Death of Sant’Onofrio is depicted with the lions in the act of laying down the body of the Saint and the monk Pannuzio indicating the place of burial with his stick. To the left of Sant’Onofrio, the client who commissioned the work and above it her scapular and two angels who carry her soul to heaven. Below, the inscription “S C S PANNUTIUS” and, further down, the figure of an illegible saint. Just after the door there is a suggestive depiction of Saint Onofrio, portrayed with long hair and beard, a loincloth of leaves, a Tau-shaped staff and a rustic Rosary crown. Other images that are difficult to read follow, one seems to recognize a Madonna del Perdono, other frescoes, no longer legible, can be glimpsed on the same wall and on the one opposite the altar. SEE WS