Head of Anastasius amulet: Unrecorded 18th-century engraving on silk.

[Amulet] / [Relics]. Venerab: Caput S: Anastasÿ Mart: Carmelit. Graz: beÿ C. Dietell, [between 1732 and 1764]. [8.2 x 6.3 cm], [1] f. engraving printed on yellow silk. Trimmed inside the platemark.  
 
 
Unrecorded 18th-century engraving printed on yellow silk and depicting an image of the head of Saint Anastasius (d. 628) carried aloft by angels. The head of St. Anastasius the Persian has been preserved as a relic at Speyer Cathedral since 1047, and before that it long resided at Tre Fontane in Rome, where today the saint’s body remains. In the 18th-century, in German speaking lands, images of the head of Anastasius were often used as amulets against evil of various sorts. Such printed amulets, intended to be carried on one’s person, have today become very rare, and examples printed on fabric are especially so. 
 
The example offered here was printed from a copperplate engraved in Graz by Christoph Dietell (1690-1764), who began his career in Vienna but was operating in Graz by 1732 (on Dietell, see, Neunteufl and Leitner). The head of Anastasius is depicted with a wound on its forehead and still wearing its Persian cap, the standard iconography for this saint. The image is simply labeled “The Venerable Head of St. Anastasius, Carmelite Martyr,” but the owner of the fabric print would have been fully aware of its amuletic properties. An Anastasius engraving on paper today preserved at the Wellcome Library (no. 586604i), for example, is labeled “Terror maleficorum,” and an example illustrated by Horst Heres (pp. 94-5, ill. 142) is explicit that it protects the holder from the Devil, ghosts, and illness (“Teüffel, Gespenster und Kranckheiten vertriben werden”).
 
 
This engraving by Christoph Dietell is not recorded in OCLC or KVK (in impressions on paper or fabric).
 
*Horst Heres, Das Private Andachtsbild: Devotionalie-Andenken-Amulett; Karin Leitner, “‘... außer meiner Person kein anderer Kupferstecher in Gratz befündlich ...’: Christoph Dietell (1690–1764),” Acta Historiae Artis Slovenica, vol. 10 (2005), pp. 95-118; Walter Neunteufl, “Christoph Dietell, ein steirischer Kartograph,” Blätter für Heimatkunde, vol. 48, no. 3 (1974), pp. 99-102; Carmela Vircillo Franklin, The Latin dossier of Anastasius the Persian: Hagiographic Translations and Transformations; Bernard Flusin, Saint Anastase le Perse et l’histoire de la Palestine au début du VIIe siècle; Ekkart Sauser, “Anastasios der Perser,” Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, vol. 14, p. 707.