ARTIST’S QUEST

Hokitika Guardian, 16 January 1933, Page 3

ARTIST’S QUEST

PORTRAIT OP SAVIOUR

BRITISH MUSFUiM FIND.

LONDON', December 24

Overlooked for many years—why, nobody can explain—early portraits of Christ which have been unearthed at th e British Museum arc now known to have been deposited there about the year 1873,; in a portfolio. portfolio -belonged to ,a distinguished British artist, Thomas Heap by. who. spent a lifetime searching for and copying early likenesses of Christ. ' He wadded ,P,ome. as a hoy, seeking a mysterious pictuv e of Jesus •in St.- Peter's but .failed to find it.

A cardinal, noticing the boy's disappo ntment, told him that it was the likeness on the cloth with which Saint Veronica had wiped Christ’s fa<-e. Only the Pope and two dignitaries were permitted to see it. Heaphy wa s allowed to, copy th, e portrait. Afterwards lie copied many treasure., in the catacombs, and made friends with numerous prelates. Although a Protestant, he was shown relics inaccessible to the public. He found one of Christ’s likooews on the.- ceiling of a second-' century catacomb. The expression is appealing and loving, yet anxious and strong, and lacks the hardness of mam later portraits. It may be the original of the traditional portraits.. The picture had not previously been reproduc’d owing to tip, difficulties of ■stereotyping at the time when Heaphy published other portraits he secured. The portfolio includes a copy of a p°r. trait of Christ attributed to St. Peter, and believed to have been drawn from memory in ink with a stylus at the request of the' daughters of a senator. Pu dens. The portrait is now the most jea lowly guarded re,pc in St. Prassedes Church, don e, and is never shown to th p publ"'. St. Peter is believed to have stayed with Piid&ns dumg the Neroniati persecution; in A.D. 67, when Pudeits’ daughter,', reamed the bodies of Christian martyrs and interred them in a secret church (i----their father’s grounds. The portrait has never left the church although it was rebuilt in the ninth century. Heaphy .reveals that the early Christians covered the -faces of the. dear with handkerchiefs bearing Christ’s features'. He c on ’ectures that Pud-ins' daughters, requiring a handkerchief tc covervii martyr face, requested -St. Petei to draw a portrait of Christ.