Vatican Museums

Possibly intended to bind an illuminated manuscript, of which it would constitute the front and the rear plate respectively, the two plates were commissioned by the abbot Odelricus of the Benedictine abbey of St. Flavian in Rambona, Macerata, in the Marche region. The abbey was erected around 898 by the empress Ageltrude, widow of Guy, Duke of Spoleto, who bore the title of king of Italy and dall'889 to dall'891 emperor until his death (894). The left valve bears a schematic Crucifixion between the Virgin and St. John – with the Sun and the Moon at the top and below, the She-wolf with the twins – occupies three-quarters of the surface; in the right valve, there is a figurative strip in which Virgin in Maestà is depicted, above a second one with the dedicatory saints. The complex iconography of the reliefs, a hardened linearity tending towards abstraction, seems to allude to Christ's triumph over pagan Rome and the new Christian empire of Ageltrude.