Antique altarpiece of the Veil of Veronica painted on zinc.

Antique altarpiece of the Veil of Veronica painted on zinc.

France, late 1700s, early 1800s

Size: 21 cm L x 17 cm W

Saint Veronica, also known as Berenike, was a widow from Jerusalem who lived in the 1st century AD, according to extra-biblical Christian traditions. Apocryphal texts relate how Veronica was moved with sympathy seeing Jesus carrying the cross to Calvary and gave him her veil so that he could wipe his forehead. Jesus accepted the offer, and when he returned the veil the image of his face was miraculously captured on it. The resulting relic became known as the Veil of Veronica.

The story of Veronica is celebrated in the sixth Station of the Cross in Anglican, Catholic, and Western Orthodox churches. A celebrated saint in many pious Christian countries, the 17th-century Acta Sanctorum published by the Bollandists listed her feast under July 12, but the German Jesuit scholar Joseph Braun cited her commemoration in Festi Marianni on January 13.