SACRED PORTRAITS

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXIII, Issue 11828, 9 January 1933, Page 3

SACRED PORTRAITS

LIKENESSES OF CHRIST IN BRITISH MUSEUM.

OVERLOOKED MANY YEARS

LONDON. December A 2

Overlooked for math- rears—-vhv. rmboflv ran exohdn—onvlv portra’tS of wliirh have been unearthed •>i, the British Museum are now known + , have been denosilod there about the year lSi*> in a riortfobo hchuigto a distinguished British artist, Thomas Heaphv. who snout a lifetime searching for and copying early likenesses of Christ. Ho walked Rome as a boy, seeking a mysterious picture of .Testis in St. Peter’s hut failed to find it.

LIKENESS ON CLOTH

A cardinal, noticing the boy’s disappointment, told him that it the likeness on the cloth with which Saint Veronica had wiped Christ s face. Only tile Pope and two dignitaries. were permitted to see itHeaphy was allowed to copy the portrait.

Afterwards lie copied many treasures in the catacombs, and made friends with numerous prelates. Although a Protestant, he was shown relics inaccessible to the public. He found -one of Christ’s likenesses on t)io ceiling of a second-century catacomb. Tho expression is appealing and loving, yet anxious and strong, and lacks tho hardness of many later portraits. It may b 0 tho original of the traditional portraits. The picture had nob previously been reproduced, owing to the difficulties of stereotyping' at the time when Hcaphy published other portraits ho secured.

ATTRIBUTED TO ST. PETER.

The portfolio includes a copy of a portrait of Christ attributed to St. Peter, and believed to have been drawn from memory in ink with 11 stylus at Hie request of the daughters of a senator, Pudeus. '- The -portrait is new the most jealously guarded relic in. St. Prassudos Church', Rome,' and is never shown to tile public. ‘St. Peter is believed to have 'stayed with’ Pudeus during, the Neoriau’' persecutions, in A. D. bt, when Puden’s daughters ' rescued the bodies of Christian martyrs . and interred them in a secret cliuich m their father’s grounds. / The portrait .has iiover . left the church, although it was rebuilt in the ninth century; Heaphy reveals that the early Christans covered the faces •of ■ the dead' with handkerchiefs bearing Christ’s features.. r He conjectures that Pudens’' daughters, requiring a hajidkcrchiel to cover a martyr’a face, requested St. 1 Peter' to draw a phitrait of Christ. , ’ . "; ; .'V