Rome

Pieces from this place

Rome

The Good Shepherd

Ref. AS009016 – AS009030 – AS009042

Rome

The Virgin in Prayer

Ref. AS014016 – AS014030 – AS014042

Rome

Salus Populi Romani

Ref. AS029016 – AS029030 – AS029042

Rome

Saint Peter the Apostle

Ref. AS034016 – AS034030 – AS034042

Rome

Saint Paul the Apostle

Ref. AS035016 – AS035030 – AS035042

Rome

Saint John Bosco

Ref. AS039016 – AS039030 – AS039042

Rome

The Holy Trinity

Ref. AS048016 – AS048030 – AS048042

Rome

Agnus Dei

Ref. AS049043

Rome

Christ the King

Ref. AS051030

Rome

Immaculate Conception

Ref. AS056016 – AS056030 – AS056042

The Good Shepherd

It is the oldest surviving Christian image, painted in the catacombs of Priscilla when Christ could not yet be shown openly. A shepherd with a lamb on his shoulders raised no suspicion.

The Virgin in Prayer

The posture descends from the orantes of the Roman catacombs, the figures with open arms found in the earliest Christian burials. Here the arms have closed over the chest and the prayer has turned inward.

Salus Populi Romani

The original hangs in Saint Mary Major and it is the icon Rome turns to when something grave happens: the end of plagues is attributed to it and it is brought out in dark hours. Pope Francis prayed before it ahead of and after every journey, and chose to be buried in that basilica, near the panel.

Saint Peter the Apostle

A fisherman from Galilee, he died in Rome under Nero and over his tomb rose the basilica that bears his name. East and West paint him differently: Rome gives him the keys, the Russian school gives him the scroll, and this panel follows the second.

Saint Paul the Apostle

He never met Jesus alive and ended up the one who wrote most about him: fourteen letters of the New Testament bear his name. He died in Rome, and over his tomb stands Saint Paul Outside the Walls.

Saint John Bosco

A priest from Turin, in 1859 he founded the Salesians to take in the boys industrialisation left on the street. He did not teach by punishment but by what he called the preventive system: reason, religion and loving kindness. Today his schools are in more than a hundred and thirty countries.

The Holy Trinity

This is the Western Trinity, with the Father shown as an old man. The Eastern tradition does not paint it this way and prefers the scene of Abraham three angels, holding that no one has seen the Father and therefore he cannot be portrayed. The two ways coexist and are not the same thing.

Agnus Dei

Before Christ was painted with a face, he was painted like this. The lamb is the oldest image Christianity has, and it stood in the apses of Rome until a council at the end of the seventh century asked that the man be shown rather than the symbol. It went on being painted anyway.

Christ the King

The feast is recent and has an exact date: Pius XI instituted it in Rome in 1925, at a moment when half of Europe was arguing about who rules. The image was fixed then, and that is why it has no ancient model: the crown is twentieth century goldsmithing.

Immaculate Conception

The model is modern and carries none of the attributes with which this devotion is usually painted: no moon, no stars, no serpent. It is a portrait of prayer, and we say so because anyone looking for the classic Murillo Immaculate will not find it here.