On a high bluff in the city of Genazzano, about 90 minutes outside of Rome, stands the church of Our Lady of Good Counsel, named for one of the oldest and most venerated artworks in Christian history that is held in the side chapel. Seeing it outside the religious context is an underwhelming experience: a 15 by 17-inch fresco, not much larger than a ledger-size sheet of paper, on a wafer-thin piece of porcelain. But to the initiated, the image’s origin represents nothing less than the miracle of Christ.

On this day, April 26, in 1467, as the village residents of Genazzano gathered at the church for the festivities of the day of St. Mark, they suddenly heard notes of heavenly music emanating from nowhere. Just then, a mysterious dark cloud descended from a clear sky over a wall of the church, completely obliterating it. When the cloud lifted, above the ruins of the wall, seemingly hovering in mid-air, was the portrait of Our Lady and the Christ Child.

There is yet another, competing tradition, mixed up with an Albanian one, that accounts for the miraculousness of the image. When the fresco was in Albanian town of Skhodra, venerated as Our Lady of Skhodra, two soldiers turn to it for help as their city was besieged by the Turks. It was said that the image detached itself from the wall, and floated, with the soldiers following it, to Rome. Then the two soldiers heard of a miraculous painting in Genazzano and discovered their holy Skhodra there, under a new church.