Pilgrimage Relics of the Vatican in the Collection of the Historical Museum

This article examines the iconographic sources of several devotional images produced for distribution in the second half of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries and depicting the Savior Not Made by Hands (Spas Nerukotvornyi). Their prototypes were among the most important sacred images of Christendom preserved in Rome. Over the course of their long histories, these objects have repeatedly attracted scholarly attention and have become standard subjects of encyclopedic entries and general surveys of art history. The veneration of these Roman prototypes, in a scene associated with the solemn procession held in Rome on 15 August, is represented in the mosaic of ca. 1143 decorating the apse conch of the basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere. The often contradictory traditions surrounding these sacred images have only heightened interest in them. For centuries, Rome’s relic icons were reproduced in numerous painted and engraved copies. Two such copies, together with a photograph of an icon whose present whereabouts are unknown and which was likewise painted after an Italian model, are preserved in the collection of the State Historical Museum. These objects are published here for the first time. Their accompanying inscriptions, translated by the author, shed further light on the cultural and historical contexts of both the works themselves and the sacred images to which they refer.

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