Unrecorded memento of the Easter Eucharist at S. Maria in Via Lata in Rome.

[Rome]. Pascha quod egeris tesseram habe catholicam de mensa Domini. R. Valenti Canonicus Parochus Aedis Deiparae Virgini dictae ad Viam Latani Urbis. Anno 1851. [Rome], s.n., [1851]. [10.5 x 10.3 cm]. [1] f. etching. Only minor wrinkling. 
$425
 
Unrecorded “tessera” etching, or souvenir ticket, commemorating and attesting to the holder’s participation in the taking of the Eucharist on Easter 1851 in the Roman church of Santa Maria in Via Lata, located at the southern end of the modern-day Via del Corso. This information and the name of the officiating priest, Romolo Valenti, are depicted here as if inscriptions carved on an altar fontal, and atop this altar is shown the church’s celebrated Marian icon (likely of late 12th-century manufacture) attended by angels (see Sgherri for the history of Sta. Maria in Via Lata’s ‘Madonna Advocata’). Ephemeral items of this sort must have been produced in great numbers in Rome at this time, but only rarely do such prints survive today.
 
 
OCLC, KVK and OPAC do not record any examples of this item.
 
*A. Bacci, Lexicon eorum vocabulorum quae difficilius Latine redduntur, p. 138; D. Sgherri, “La Madonna Advocata in Santa Maria in via Lata,” in S. Romano, Riforma e tradizione, 1050-1198, vol. 4, pp 267-69.