Blessing in Rome of the Holy Child at the Ara Coeli (1887)

signed and dated lower left ‘R. Tusquets Roma 1887’

One of the greatest protagonists of the community of Spanish artists in Rome, Raimondo Tusquets y Maignon skilfully combined his Catalan painting training with Italian influences. A friend of the great Mariano Fortuny, who introduced him to Orientalist subjects and costumes, he became the interpreter of a luminous painting style, attentive to virtuoso chromatic detail, with which he executed his famous views of Rome and its surroundings. Influenced, moreover, by the study of Velásquez and the more recent painting of Domenico Morelli, he also tackled large cycles of history paintings at home, achieving such success that he appeared in the most important illustrated magazines of the time and participated in prestigious international exhibitions. Today, his works are held in the most important Italian and Spanish museums, including the Prado in Madrid.

The painting depicting the Blessing of the Holy Child at the Ara Coeli in Rome, executed in 1887, is the narration of an iconic episode in the sacred and popular history of late 19th century Rome. The gilded statue of the Child, so dear to the Romans and shrouded in an almost mythical aura, has been stolen several times, but still awaits its original mission, that of protecting the sick by sometimes coming out of its chapel to visit those who request it. The prodigious statue, according to legend, was carved from a trunk of Gethsemane by a Franciscan friar towards the end of the 15th century. Every Christmas, the statue of the ‘little king’ leaves its shrine to be placed in the arms of the Virgin in the traditional nativity scene of the Ara Coeli and, after the afternoon mass on Epiphany Day, the Child is carried in the procession to Piazza del Campidoglio and blessed on the parvis of the Basilica.

This precious painting by Tusquets depicts precisely the moment just before the start of the ceremony, but from an unusual and defiladed point of view, a sort of ‘behind the scenes’: the Basilica towers in the background in all its ancient splendour, illuminated by the light of the cold winter sunset of 6 January. On the parvis and on the long flight of steps, one notices the crowd of people who are about to witness the blessing of the statue, while on the right side of the Cordonata del Campidoglio, in Via delle Tre Pile, the cardinal’s carriage stops, accompanied by the guards and another priest, on its way to the steps. On the right, in the shadows generated by the imposing Dioscuri, a piece of reality of the most popular Rome, with the poor woman holding a child in her arms, perhaps symbolically recalling the Child about to be blessed.

The painting thus constitutes a rare document of a ritual, of an ancient sacred tradition that still persists today, as very few remain, including a colour lithograph from around 1830, in which, however, the point of view is the canonical one on the steps and the depiction becomes a true travel souvenir.

Tusquets, on the other hand, through his splendid and technically impeccable painting, was able to narrate the great episode by curiously shifting the focus to the cardinal’s intimate moment of recollection away from the crowd, without, however, renouncing the importance of the ceremony for Roman tradition.

Elena Lago