Votive Pictures.[1] These are in the church of Aracoeli, on the Capitoline Hill at Rome, and in S. Nicolo at Verona, which contains more than one hundred of them. The pictures have much the same character. They are small oil paintings, 10 to 12 inches square, coarsely painted. Most of them belong to the last century, but one bears date as late as 1892. They have on them the letters p.g.r. (=per grazia ricevuta), and often an inscription, with the name, circumstances, and ex voto. They depict people in all sorts of predicaments. The commonest type is one or more persons in sick-bed, with or without friends praying by the bedside.[2] In the air usually hovers the patron saint, or the Virgin; sometimes a group of heavenly beings is shown in the clouds, while below are others suffering the pangs of purgatory. We see a boy tumbling from a ladder; a child falling downstairs; several have a man run over by a cart; or a cart falls over a precipice; a building falls, carrying some workmen with it; and so forth. On one are seen shipwrecked mariners on a raft; a boat comes up to rescue them. Another shows an attempted murder and robbery outside the Amphitheatre at Verona, which is unmistakably portrayed in the background (p. g. r., 1647, m. p.). Here are some specimens of the legends. Two women and a man are welcomed by two nuns at a convent door; beneath which we read: Tre Germani traviati it gran Gaetatio conduce a Dio con invisibil mano. The greater number of those at Verona are hung in the corridors, which are so dark that it is hard to see them; but within the church are more recent offerings, frames containing an inscription only, as this:—
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W. H. D. Rouse.
