Maître-peintre byzantin anonyme, « Salus Populi Romani »

Maître-peintre byzantin anonyme (Antiquité tardive)

Salus Populi Romani (Protectrice du peuple romain), fin du VIe – début du VIIe s. [1]« Les dates proposées par divers auteurs (souvent de manière apodictique [*]) s’échelonnent du Ve au XIIIe siècle » ; Gerhard Wolf, historien de l’art allemand et directeur du Kunsthistorisches Institut à Florence, avance une date « relativement ancienne », fondée sur un examen approfondi de l’icône en 1987, laquelle s’avère être un « palimpseste (*) … Poursuivre

Huile sur panneau, 117 x 79 cm.

Inscriptions :

• (sur le fond d’or) : « Μ[HΤH]Ρ Θ[ΕΟ]Υ » [2](« Μήτηρ Θεοῦ » : « Mère de Dieu. » Voir : MP ΘY.

Provenance :

Rome, Basilique de Santa Maria Maggiore, Chapelle Pauline (ou Borghese).

Selon la tradition, la basilique Sainte-Marie-Majeure elle-même fut édifiée à la suite d’un miracle. D’après le récit, la Vierge Marie apparut en songe au pape Libère (352-366) ainsi qu’à deux pieux citoyens romains — un homme et son épouse — pour leur demander de faire construire une église en son honneur, à l’endroit précis où surviendrait une chute de neige dans la nuit du 4 au 5 août.

,^{[1][2][3][4][5]} also known as the Salvific Health of the Roman people) is a Roman Catholic title associated with the venerated image of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Rome. This Byzantine icon of the Madonna and Child Jésus holding a Gospel book on a gold ground, now heavily overpainted, is kept in the Borghese (Pauline) Chapel of the Basilica of Saint Mary Major.^[6][7]

The image is five feet high by three and a quarter feet wide (117 × 79 cm) – very large for an icon, especially one with an early date. It is painted on a thick cedar panel. Mary wears a gold-trimmed, dark blue mantle over a purple/red tunic. The letters in Greek at the top identify Mary as « Mother of God » (Μήτηρ Θεοῦ in lower case and ΜHΤHΡ ΘΕΟΥ in upper case), as is usual in Byzantine art (Christ may originally have had an inscription under later re-painting). Christ is holding a book in his left hand, presumably a Gospel Book. His right hand is raised in a blessing,^[13] and it is Mary not he who looks directly out at the viewer. The folded together position of Mary’s hands distinguishes this image as a version of the earlier type from before the development of the iconography of the Hodegetria image in the 10th century, where she points to Christ with her right hand.^[15]« Rather than offering the Child, she keeps his body closer to hers and seeks physical and tactile contact with him. »^[15] However the few other examples of this type do not have the Virgin’s hands folded together – the right hand holds Christ’s knee.

The Virgin holding in her left hand a mappa (or mappula, a sort of embroidered ceremonial handkerchief), originally a consular symbol, later an imperial one, means this image is probably one of the type showing Mary as Regina coeli or « Queen of Heaven ».^[16] In addition, the Virgin also wears a plain, golden, ring band in her middle finger of her right hand, later obscured by a gemstone. The image no longer wears its Canonical crowns and jeweled regalia, which have now been transferred to the treasury of the sacristy of Saint Peter’s Basilica.

It is agreed that the current painted surface is largely or entirely the result of medieval overpainting, and that somewhere underneath lies an older original image. The earliest version of the image « has been confidently dated to almost every possible period between the fifth century and the thirteenth ».^[17] The recent full-length study by Gerhard Wolf says, cautiously, that it is « probably Late Antique » in its original form.^[11]