The Iconography of the Roman Veronica : from the repertoires of Karl Pearson to Veronica Route

This article seeks to identify the Roman veronica's iconographic features by comparing the 200 veronicas' characteristics noted by Pearson in 1887, the observations of diverse veronica scholars, and an online database of 3,817 veronicas (www.veronicaroute.com) in which each example is tagged for place and date. Pearson noted the veronica's link to the Mandylion – the light/dark face, the transfigured/suffering face – and arrived at 1450 as the turning point from the transfigured to the suffering face. According to the Index of concentration, dark-faced veronicas with a "cut-out" outline are linked to the Roman relic, suggesting that early veronicas resembled the Mandylia in Rome and Genoa. According to the database, the early veronicas resembled the Mandylion; the dominant type of veronica between 1300 and 1500 had the transfigured face; and there is not necessarily a link between the dark face of the veronica and the suffering face of Christ.