Product Description
Cloth-bound box with impressed gold decorations containing 35 ecthings painted in with water-colour and mounted on canvas plus a booklet with an introductory essay in English and Italian by Angela Vicini Mastrangeli. The etchings painted in with watercolour and touched up by hand, depicting the solemn Vatican Corpus Domini (Corpus Christi) procession at the time of Pope Gregory XVI. It is a facsimile edition of a valuable antique aquired by the Biblioteca Casanatense in 1999 and published by Vallecchi to mark the Jubilee 2000. The subject of the work is the feast of Corpus Domini. By far the most solemn rite in Rome and its surrounding region since 1264, the celebration was made official by Urban IV, who decreed it was to be held on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday. The original plates were engraved by Salvatore Busuttil ( born on Gozo, Malta, 1798) and published in 1839. This splendid valuable colourful panorama of the religious rite is thus a unique socio-historical document. Busuttil skilfully conveys the details, nuances and impressions in small genre scenes in which a varigated humanity, dressed up in the finery of the time, forms the contingent and popular background to a timeless solemn rituality.