Attributed to Joan de Joanes (Valencia, ca. 1510 – 1579) or Vicente Masip Comes (Valencia, ca. 1555 – 1623)
The Veil of Veronica, often called the Sudarium, is one of the most important and well-known relics of Christ. According to legend, Veronica offered Christ her veil as he carried the cross to his crucifixion. He wiped his face with the veil, which left the cloth miraculously imprinted with his image. Depictions of Christ’s face on a veil, or simply images that focused in on Christ’s face, were treasured objects of religious devotion. The popularity of this format also inspired similar images of the face of the Virgin.
The iconographic type of the present painting is known as the Veronica of the Virgin, which was especially favored in late medieval and early Renaissance Spain. Distinct from the images of the suffering Christ, the Veronica of the Virgin is based on the legend that Saint Luke painted a portrait of Mary from life. Although scholars have sometimes mistaken them for portraits of Queen Isabella I of Castile (known as Isabel la Católica) or as a depiction of Saint Maria Toribia (known as María de la Cabeza, or, Mary of the Head), paintings like this one were clearly intended as images of the Virgin in the style of Saint Luke’s lost portrait.
The Veronica of the Virgin was especially popular in Valencia, and depictions of this subject produced there all stem back to one visual prototype: a Byzantine image in the city’s cathedral (Fig. 1). This early treatment of the Veronica was given to the cathedral in 1437 by Martin the Humane, King of Aragon and Valencia, who promoted religious veneration of the Veronica of the Virgin as part of the celebration of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. This devotion spread throughout Martin’s kingdom and particularly took hold in Valencia, where the Byzantine image resided. The image, which is displayed in a gold reliquary, was an especially revered object and must have frequently been on display in the cathedral and in processions. It was a source of inspiration for images of the Veronica of the Virgin throughout the 15th and 16th centuries.
Several prominent Valencian artists—including Gonçal Peris Sarrià, Juan Reixach, and Joan de Joanes—took up this subject and painted double-sided images of the Veronicas of Christ and of the Virgin. The most influential of these works was that of Joan de Joanes in the church of San Nicolás in Valencia (Fig. 2). Joanes’s treatment of the Veronica of the Virgin (dated 1572) was popularized by his students and followers, and images of this type proliferated in Spain (Fig. 3). A version of this composition must have even reached the New World by the late 17th century, where it was copied by the Mexican painter Juan Correa.
Our painting is clearly based on Joanes’s Veronica and was likely executed by a Valencian artist in his immediate circle. The panel has in fact been attributed both to Joan de Joanes and his son Vicente Macip Comes (by Drs. Albert and Stefania Ferrer), while Dr. José Gómez Frechina considers it to be by an as yet unidentified associate of Joan de Joanes, one superior to Joan de Joanes’s known students.
The painting is presented in a period, 16th-century Spanish ebony frame.
