page_title: Salus Populi Romani
section_title: Dating by art historians
hierarchical_section_title: Salus Populi Romani / Dating by art historians
caption_attribution_description: English: This is a rare photo of the Salus Populi Romani, crowned by Pius XII in 1953. After the renovation, the crown was deleted and is now in the museum of the sacristy of Saint Peter. The picture today in Rome exists therefore only without the crown.
context_page_description: Salus Populi Romani is a Roman Catholic title associated with the venerated image of the Virgin Mary in Rome. This Byzantine icon of the Madonna and Christ Child holding a Gospel book is kept in the Borghese Chapel of the Basilica of Saint Mary Major.
  The image arrived in Rome in the year 590 AD during the reign of Pope Gregory I. Pope Gregory XVI granted the image a Canonical Coronation on 15 August 1838 through the Papal bull Cælestis Regina. Pope Pius XII crowned the image again and ordered a public religious procession during the Marian year of 1954. The image was cleaned and restored by the Vatican Museum in 2018.
  The phrase Salus Populi Romani goes back to the legal system and pagan rituals of the ancient Roman Republic. After the legalisation of Christianity by Emperor Constantine the Great through the Edict of Milan in 313 AD, the phrase was sanctioned as a Marian title for the Blessed Virgin Mary.
context_section_description: The image "has been confidently dated to almost every possible period between the fifth century and the thirteenth". The recent full-length study by Gerhard Wolf says, cautiously, that it is "probably Late Antique" in its original form.
  The icon in its current state of overpainting seems to be a work of the 13th century (as witnessed by the features of the faces), but other layers visible under the top one suggest it is a repainting of a much earlier piece; especially revealing is the modeling of Child's right hand in the first layer, which can be compared to other early Christian icons that display 'Pompeian' illusionistic qualities. The areas of linear stylization, such as Christ's garment which is rendered in golden hatching producing a flat effect, seem to go back to the 8th century, and can be compared with a very early icon of Elijah from Mount Sinai. A second restoration process started around 1100 and came to an end in the 13th century. The Virgin's blue mantle which is wrapped over her purple dress was severely altered in the outline; the red halos are also not part of the original image.
  The image type itself suggests it is not a medieval invention, but rather an Early Christian concept dating from antiquity: a majestic, half-length portrait showing a frank outward gaze of the rulerlike Virgin, with her upright, stately pose and folded hands gently clasping the Child, unique among all icons. Lively turning of the maturely developed and attired Child also attests to the painting's antiquity. The vivid contrapposto of the two bodies, which suggests direct observation, can be compared with a 5th-century Mount Sinai icon of the Virgin and Child in Kiev, and contrasted with the Pantheon Marian icon from 609, which already shows the Mother slightly subordinated to the Child by the imploring gesture and the turn of the head, and where the interaction of the bodies exists only in a flat plane. These comparisons suggest a date of the 7th century for the icon.
  The early fame of the icon can be gauged from the production of replicas (a fresco in Santa Maria Antiqua seems to have reproduced it already in the 8th century), and the role it played in the ritual on the feast of the Virgin's Assumption, where the Acheiropoieta (the panel painting of Christ from the Lateran Basilica) was moved in a procession to Santa Maria Maggiore to 'meet' with it. Monneret de Villard has shown that engravings of this icon brought by Jesuits to Ethiopia influenced the art of that country from the 17th century onwards, repeating "every detail of her own and the Child's posture, the position of the hands being especially characteristic." More far flung apparent copies include a Moghul miniature, presumably based on a copy given to Akbar by the Jesuits, and copies in China, of which a 16th-century example is in the Field Museum in Chicago.
caption: The image adorned with its Canonical crowns and jewel regalia, no longer attached today. The crowns are stored within the treasury department of Saint Peter’s Basilica.
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