Veil of Veronica
The story of the image's origin is related to the sixth Station of the Cross, wherein Saint Veronica, encountering Jesus along the Via Dolorosa to Calvary, wipes the blood and sweat from his face with her veil.
"[1] The act of Saint Veronica wiping the face of Jesus with her veil is celebrated in the sixth Station of the Cross in many Anglican, Catholic, and Western Orthodox churches.
Shortly after that, in 1207, the cloth became more prominent when it was publicly paraded and displayed by Pope Innocent III, who also granted indulgences to anyone praying before it.
For the next two hundred years, the Veil, retained at Old St Peter's, was regarded as the most precious of all Christian relics; there Pedro Tafur, a Spanish visitor in 1436, noted: On the right hand is a pillar as high as a small tower, and in it is the holy Veronica.
[12] Many artists of the time created reproductions of the Veronica, again suggesting its survival, but in 1616, Pope Paul V prohibited the manufacture of further copies unless made by a canon of Saint Peter's Basilica.
In the 17th century the veil was found hidden in a relic chamber built by Bernini into one of the piers supporting the dome of St Peter's.
[10] As there is no conclusive evidence that it ever left St Peter's, the possibility exists that it remains there to this day; this would be consistent with such limited information as the Vatican has provided in recent centuries.
There are at least six images in existence which bear a marked resemblance to each other, one which is traditionally claimed to be the original Veil, others direct copies of the first and, in two cases, the Mandylion.
To these contours, frankly accused, we suspect long hair that falls on the shoulders, and a short beard that turns into two little-supplied wicks.
[citation needed] In the Hofburg Palace in Vienna there is a copy of the Veronica, identified by the signature of P. Strozzi in the right hand corner of the inner frame.
He was the secretary of Pope Paul V, and a man referred to by Vatican notary Jacopo Grimaldi as making a series of six meticulous copies of the veil in 1617.
This veil was given by a Vatican cardinal to a Spanish priest, Mosen Pedro Mena, who took it to Alicante, in southern Spain, where it arrived in 1489, at the same time as a severe drought.
Carried in a procession on 17 March by an Alicante priest, Father Villafranca, a tear sprang from the eye of the face of Christ on the veil and rain began to fall.
The relic is now housed in the Monastery of the Holy Face (Monasterio de la Santa Faz), on the outskirts of Alicante, in a chapel built in 1611 and decorated between 1677 and 1680 by the sculptor José Vilanova, the gilder Pere Joan Valero and the painter Juan Conchillos.
In 1999, German Jesuit Father Heinnrich Pfeiffer, Professor of Art History at the Pontifical Gregorian University,[27] announced at a press conference in Rome that he had found the Veil in a church of a Capuchin monastery, in the small village of Manoppello, Italy, where it had been since 1660.
A few years later, Marzia sold it for 400 scudi to Doctor Donato Antonio De Fabritiis to pay a ransom demand for her husband, who was then a prisoner in Chieti.
One tradition (Type I), common in Italian art, shows the face of Christ as full-bearded, in pain, scourged and perhaps crowned with thorns.
Another (Type II), common in Russian and Spanish art, shows Christ's face more often in repose, hair extending to shoulder length and a bifurcated beard, often surrounded by a halo quartered in a cross.
