La prova e il perdono : il sacramento della Riconciliazione nel ciclo veronesiano per San Nicolò dei Frari: una lettura iconologica

The Baptism and Temptations of Christ, painted by Paolo Veronese in 1582 ca. and part of the important cycle of the lost church of San Nicolò “della Lattuga” ai Frari, is a well-known work in the catalog of the pictor celeberrimus, but has not been studied well (Aikema 2014, 250). The painting presents an iconographic hapax in the production of the Veronese’s workshop and, also, in the Venetian painting of the sixteenth century. The analysis proposed in this contribution does not address issues of the Veronesian style, but instead proposes an iconological interpretation focused on the religious and catechetical meaning of the work. The theme of Baptism and salvation were extremely current in those years, when art had the task of spreading and educating christian people on the dictates of the recently concluded Council of Trent. However, the picture has some iconographic discrepancies with the figurative tradition and from the comparison with biblical texts. But, if the painting is then placed in the original context and placed in relation to the canvas that was immediately above it, the Washing of the Feet and Last Supper by Benedetto Caliari, the meaning of the painting – of both paintings – leaves the dimension of mere narration to involve the exegetical, catechetical and liturgical field. The reason is that, in the background, hidden between the two episodes of Baptism and the Eucharistic Supper, which correspond to the two main sacraments of the Christian church, there is a third sacrament, rejected by the Lutheran Reformed and in defense of which the Council had waged a hard battle: the sacrament of the Reconciliation of sins, commonly called Confession. My thesis is that, in a catechetical dimension of imitatio Christi, between the Temptation suffered by Jesus and the Washing of the feet, the worshipper could ‘see’ the sacrament of Reconciliation, and consequently admit their own fall into sin and the need to to be purified, that is, to confess and receive forgiveness.