Corrado Giaquinto, 'Moses striking the Rock', 1743-4

These two paintings are modelli, or presentation pieces, for frescoes in the basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme in Rome. As part of the restoration of the church, which began in 1741, Giaquinto painted canvases for the nave’s ceiling and frescoes for the lower walls of the apse. Pope Benedict XIV promoted this initiative as part of the upcoming celebration of the Holy Year of 1750.

A fragment of the True Cross (the Cross on which Christ was crucified) was brought back from the Holy Land by Helen, mother of the first Christian Roman Emperor (Constantine). This relic, which was central to the basilica’s iconographical scheme, had previously been housed in the private chapel of Helen’s villa, on the site where Santa Croce was later built. The Cross features prominently in Corrado Giaquinto’s painted canvases adorning the nave’s ceiling, completed between 1744 and 1746, representing The Adoration of the True Cross on the Day of Judgement and Saint Helen and Constantine presented to the Holy Trinity by the Virgin Mary. The Adoration was painted on a large canvas, set into the nave’s wooden ceiling, and shows the apostles adoring the True Cross, as Constantine had done before his victory over Maxentius’s troops in AD 312. The other canvas, also set into the ceiling, is at the point of the nave’s crossing and features Saint Michael, Helen, Constantine and the Holy Trinity.

Giaquinto’s frescoes in the apse, which were painted ‘a secco’ – that is, on dry rather than fresh plaster (‘a fresco’) – feature scenes of Moses' miracles on his way to the Promised Land. In preparation for the commission, Giaquinto first painted bozzetti, or sketches, and then he produced modelli for approval by the Pope and the procurator of the Cistercian Order, Raimondo Besozzi. These modelli are the two paintings today in the National Gallery, and the related bozzetti are in the Prado, Madrid. The modelli enable us to recreate the original colour scheme of the frescoes, which have been damaged by humidity and unsuccessful nineteenth-century restorations.

After Giaquinto finished the commission, Pope Benedict XIV declared the basilica ‘a modern mess’ as other parts of the renovation project had been abandoned due to lack of funds. This meant that the decorative programme remained incomplete, and we have to look at Giaquinto’s later schemes, such as the work he did in the Spanish royal palaces in Madrid (where he worked from 1753), to give us an idea of what the overall effect might have been.