Let us climb the stairs leading to an elevated quadrangular space located at the base of the bell tower. In the small apse, one can admire a fresco dating to the 12th century depicting the Archangel Saint Michael. He is shown frontally, dressed in Byzantine style, wearing a richly adorned garment edged with pearls. He holds a lance in his right hand, while with his left he presumably once held the scales used to weigh the souls of the dead. According to some scholars, this space was intended as a schola cantorum; according to others, it was instead an so-called “aerial” chapel, typical of the Frankish milieu of the Carolingian and Ottonian periods, also found within the bell tower of the Abbey of Farfa.
It is interesting to note the green-colored face of the Archangel: it appears this way because, of all the layers of paint originally applied to depict the face, only the underlying layer known as verdaccio has survived. This was indeed a base color, often with a greenish-gray tone, fundamental in medieval and Renaissance frescoes. It served to define volume and shadows of faces and other parts of the body before the application of brighter colors, thus creating the effect of chiaroscuro.
Now turn around and approach the stone slab used as a parapet. It is a large slab of calcareous onyx, also known as alabaster onyx. This stone is characterized by its translucency. Try turning on your phone’s flashlight and placing it against the slab: by leaning over, you will be able to see the light filtering through to the other side.
Let us now go back down and move into the right nave.
