Ho always had great regard for the face of Christ of Manoppelloin the province of Pescara. This Christ had been hidden by a traveler in 1506 at the Capuchin convent, on which the current Abruzzo-style basilica later arose. The face was returned to the community by Baron Pardiwho rediscovered it and made it the destination of a pilgrimage, giving it the right light.
I talked about it in this column a few years ago, but in the current months of obscurantism, immersed in the horror of Gaza, in the war in Ukraine, in the oppression of the news, even personal ones, I am convinced that there is much more Enlightenment, that is, that tendency to invade the rational reality – in the pilgrimage to Christ of Manoppello than in today’s reality, which seems to impose irrational behavior on us.
It is honorable and reasonable to go and look for this face of Christ with a mysterious origin in a churchbecause in that mystery there is a light of reason which, without the need for explanations or appeals, but only by virtue of its own iconic strength, makes this a place of pilgrimage.
It is one of the most venerated and important relics we have in Italyvenerated by the faithful for the dazzling strength of her face, which is that of a Christ no longer patiens, but risen. The veil is made of sea byssus, a fabric that changes color and appearance depending on the lighting, making the face almost transparent to direct light and visible only against the light. The image is visible both frontally and posteriorly and, clearly, it can be superimposed on the image of the Shroud.
This face is far more important than the place that contains it, because the sanctuary itself is not, on an architectural level, particularly remarkable, but the mental effort, based on the evidence of fiction, is notable. Clearly that image of sea byssus is painted, but we must think that it was born “by itself”, as if it were not painted by a human hand. In this sense I was saying that the origin of this “relic” is mysterious and numinous.
The “Holy Face” by an anonymous author, in the basilica of Manoppello (Pescara).
I would have a hard time imagining it older than 1490, to say a possible date, or 1506. And I have a bit of a hard time thinking that it is the imprint of a face, when its technique and its workmanship indicate to me a different era, which is also true for the Shroud. But this doesn’t count: lthe Shroud is the body of Christ even if it is not the body of Christ, and that face is the face of Christ even if it is not the imprint of his facebecause it is what our mind feels to be true, not the objective truth of that thing.
The image most similar to the face of the Christ of Manoppello is the Salvator Mundithe blessing Christ of the National Gallery by Antonello da Messinaone of the masterpieces of the Renaissance. And this already seems to me to be a miracle, an apparition. Gianni Vattimo used the formula “I believe I believe”. I don’t know how to believe. I have often made this objection: Mary’s apparitions, in Lourdes as in Fatima as in Medjugorje, happen to shepherd children and farmers. The Madonna never appears to Umberto Eco, Massimo Cacciari, Albert Einstein. But the counter-argument is that if that happened, or had happened, they probably wouldn’t have believed it anyway. And in any case the reason in them fills, perhaps, every desire.
“Salvador Mundi” by Antonello da Messina (circa 1465), exhibited at the National Gallery in London (photo Getty Images).
But I continue to see the face of Manoppello, and I return when I can. Its beauty touches and pierces me, which shines more than its truth, that is, its true or presumed correspondence to the face of the true Jesus, “truly” risen. I approach it as I approach the Risen Christ by Piero della Francesca, whose truth, in beauty, surpasses any truth of a documentary nature. And this image also performed a miracle.
In the final phase of the Second World War, the English general Anthony Clarke interrupted the bombing of the city of Sansepolcro, in the province of Arezzo, remembering that it guarded Piero’s wonderful workand recalling the admiration that the writer Aldous Huxley had for it. Therefore a double miracle, generated by Art and Literature: a fresco and a book saved the lives of thousands of people. You may not believe the facts, but you may be overwhelmed by the beauty of the images of Piero, of Antonello, of an anonymous person. And writing, now, here, I realize that beauty could save the world, because it is more powerful than truth.
All articles by Vittorio Sgarbi