The Church of San Salvatore at Spoleto: some structural notes

Abstract

The church of San Salvatore, on the outskirts of Spoleto, is a monument as familiar as it is puzzling. Together with the closely related Clitumnus temple, 10 km. distant between Spoleto and Trevi, it has been the subject of at least one monograph and of numerous articles, and it figures in all the standard works on late antique and early medieval art in Italy. It first appears in history in a document of 815, confirming to the abbey of Farfa certain possessions, including monasterium sancti Salvatoris situm prope eandem civitatem (i.e. Spoleto). The majority of writers have regarded both it and the Clitumnus Temple as the product of a late antique, classicising revival, and have assigned them to dates ranging from the late fourth to the sixth centuries. Recently Deichmann has advanced the novel, but attractive, suggestion that they belong rather to the latter part of the eighth century, and are the work of the Dukes of Spoleto, produced under Carolingian domination and under strong Carolingian artistic influence.