The Holy Face: 18th-century painted amulet on linen.

[Painted amulet]. [Holy Face or Caput Christi]. S.l. [Tyrol?], s.n., dated 1770 in bottom corner. [10.7 x 6.8 cm], [1] gouache painting on linen, decorative hem in blue thread. Minor toning and staining, minor edge wear, a few hem threads missing, initials in manuscript on verso (“D v f”). 
 
 
Rare 18th-century painted amulet depicting the Holy Face of Christ on linen. This distinctive image shows a suffering Christ with bruised and bleeding wounds, a pale face, hooded eyes, and a radiating halo. It is related to the well-known depictions of Veronica’s Veil (the Sudarium) and the Mandylion of Edessa, and even to relic shrouds such as those of Turin and Besançon.
 
This item seems to be dated in the lower right corner, in the same green pigment used in the image, with the inscription perhaps reading “Ao. 1770” (the text is partly obscured by the blue thread of the hem). On the verso are written the initials “D v f” in a contemporary hand.
 
Adolph Spamer described and illustrated an example of a similar apotropaic object—meant to be carried on one’s person or displayed in the home—in his classic Das kleine Andachtsbild vom XIV bis zum XX Jahrhundert (1930; p. 324, no. and plate CLXXIX), localizing it to Tyrol (the area around Innsbruck, Austria) in the years just before 1800. Horst Heres, in his Das private Andachtsbild: Devotionale, Andenken, Amulett (2007; p. 15., ill. 4 & p. 65, ill. 95) illustrates similar versions of the image painted on parchment and on linen. He remarks that the use of fabric in depictions of the Holy Face was clearly meant to link them materially to the original textile relics (the Veronica, etc.).
 
It is possible that the item offered here was used as a devotional scapular. The Holy Face or Veronica is known to have been worn as a scapular, but it received official papal approval only in 1885.
 
 
*A. Spamer, Das kleine Andachtsbild vom XIV bis zum XX Jahrhundert; Horst Heres, Das private Andachtsbild: Devotionale, Andenken, Amulett.