The controversial fresco of an angel with the face of Giorgia Meloni, which became a source of jokes and a focus of attraction for visitors, is now history. The author himself, the sacristan of the temple, deleted it on Tuesday night: “I did it because the Vatican ordered me to,” declared Bruno Valentinetti, famous for a few days after triumphing with his controversial work. Although he continues to maintain that the face in the image, pinned to the prime minister, was not her. “I’m not interested, I keep saying that it wasn’t her, but the Curia wanted it that way and I deleted it,” he declared to The Republicthe newspaper that revealed this artistic curiosity.
Valentinetti, who denied being a Meloni voter but who, according to the newspaper, had been on the lists of a neo-fascist party in 2008, will now repaint his original face. This is a recent work, from 2000, on a funerary monument in memory of Umberto II, the last king of Italy, which the sexton had reinvented at the time of the restoration. Although he also maintained that he had limited himself to faithfully reproducing the one that existed before and the similarity was coincidence. Valentinetti was very proud of his work, which he signed with an inscription in Latin: “Instauratum et exornatum. Bruno Valentinetti. AD MMXXV.” He seemed very happy to be the center of attention and giving interviews, but he has finally been called to order.
Of course, this supernatural appearance of Meloni in a chapel in the baroque basilica of San Lorenzo in Lucina, very close to Parliament, had not gone down well with the Catholic Church, despite the general atmosphere of discontent. Meloni herself took it as a joke on Instagram, with a laughing emoticon: “No, I certainly don’t look like an angel.”
Rows of curious people and tourists
However, the opposition also cried foul and declared it “unacceptable,” seeing in the work “a cult of personality such as had not been seen since the times of fascism.” The Superintendency of Artistic Assets of Rome, dependent on the Ministry of Culture, had also moved to search for photographs of the original fresco and verify that it had been altered, since the permit for the restoration clearly indicated that the existing iconography must be respected.
Meanwhile, rivers of curious onlookers and tourists began to arrive at the church to see the pastiche with their own eyes and to become selfis. To the point that the day after the news, last Sunday, the priest had to improvise a kind of order service to regulate the lines. In the afternoon, the scene was surreal, because visitors paraded amidst laughter while a mass was celebrated in Tagalog for the Filipino community.
The unrest in the Church is also due to the fact that the bishop of Rome and ultimately responsible for the mess is none other than the Pope himself. The parish priest of the temple, Daniele Micheletti, one of the first to comment on the news on January 31, admitted the portrait’s resemblance to the president, but downplayed its importance. However, a few hours later, Cardinal Baldo Reina, vicar of Rome, reacted severely, “distancing himself from Monsignor Micheletti’s statements.” He expressed “his own bitterness over what happened” and announced that he would take immediate action. “It is firmly reiterated that images of sacred art and Christian tradition cannot be subjected to improper uses or instrumentalization, being intended exclusively to sustain liturgical life and personal and community prayer,” he concluded.
