ITALIE, VÉNÉTIE-FIN DU XIVe Siècle Lot n° 1

FRONTON AT THE HOLY FACE Verona Stone (Nodular Limestone) H. 61 cm, W. 113 cm, D. 8 cm The pediment is carved in beautiful Verona stone. It is moulded on two of its three sides and has in its centre a bas-relief of the Holy Face framed by two openings in the shape of a cross pattée. The Holy Face is treated in a very delicate bas-relief emerging from the surface. The theme of the Holy Face originates in the Byzantine relic of the Mandylion, attested as early as the 6th century, and then asserts itself in Christian iconography with the story of St. Veronica from the 13th century, two accounts of acheiropoietic icons. In fact, the Holy Face designates the face of Christ taken from a portrait not made by human hands. In the case of Veronica's veil (Vera Icon: the true image), the woman's linen would have been marked with the face of Christ by wiping the sweat of Jesus carrying his cross. This supernatural portrait of the Son of God developed in Western Christian iconography especially in the Middle Ages and regained favour in the seventeenth century. The face is depicted frontally, with the eyes mostly open and wearing the crown of thorns. The theme is also an opportunity for painters to prove their bravery by depicting the cloth in trompe l'oeil. In our work the piece of cloth is not represented and the face is completely isolated in a very elegantly composed sobriety. It hangs gracefully in the air. The hair and beard are treated in parallel wavy strands floating around the face, topped with a crown of thorns. The treatment of the eyes shows a distinctly fourteenth-century style, while the mode of representation of the Christic face, isolated in this way, appears in fifteenth-century Florentine bas-reliefs (Museo Bardini, inv. Depositi comunali 28). It would therefore be around this period that the realization of this beautiful pediment should be situated. The representation of the halo treated in perspective rather than