1)
The Gallerie dell'Accademia Museum in Venice contains three famous paintings on the subject of the Miracle that occurred the Bridge of San Lorenzo in 137o.
Above is the Miracle of the Relic of the Holy Cross at the Bridge of San Lorenzo, by Gentile Bellini.
Below is Gentile Bellini's Procession of the True Cross in Piazza San Marco and the Miracle of the True Cross by Vittore Carpaccio.
There is one fourth painting, also very famous, in which the reliquary containing the relic appears.
This is the Portrait of the Vendramin Family, by Titian, now in the National Gallery in London.
2)
Helena's journey to the Holy Land to find the True Cross is a story that overwhelms one in Jerusalem-- as it is told and re-told. Jerusalem was her city, after all.
Having traveled there as an old woman of eighty, she worked tirelessly founding basilicas (pointing her imperial fingers and saying, "this is just the place for a basilica") and searching tirelessly for the true cross. Digging down-- in her dreams and at excavation sites-- she was to eventually uncover those three crosses, and gaining divine help she discerned which of the three was the cross that Christ died on. Likened by Evelyn Waugh to that of the Three Magi, Helena's one historic act of devotion would live on in history-- generating the obsession with relics that would come to dominate the Middle Ages and lead to the building of the greatest church in Christendom--the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
This search for truth-- for metaphor and something eternal is what drives Saint Helena and captured Waugh in his own seeking. His novel on Helena is wonderful. And its message is simply stated at the end of the story: Above all the babble of her age and ours she makes one blunt assertion. And there alone is Hope.
After visiting the Holy Land for his novel Helena, Waugh wrote: 'One has been at the core of one's religion. It's all there, with superhuman faults and its superhuman triumphs, and one finally realizes, perhaps for the first time, that Christianity did not strike its first roots at Rome, or Canterbury, or Geneva or Maynooth, but here in the Levant' In the novel, loosely based on the life of St Helena, he writes: 'Above all the babble of her age and ours, she makes one blunt assertion, that Jesus died at a particular time and at a particular place. And there alone lies hope.'
3)
Pray always for all the learned, the oblique, the delicate. Let them not be quite forgotten at the throne of God when the simple come into their kingdom-- Evelyn Waugh
Back then, the story of the True Cross was new to us both.
Having its origins in the medieval Golden Legend, it tells the tale of the Cross from its beginnings in the tree of knowledge in the garden of Eden. A shoot of this tree was planted at Adam’s grave by his son Seth. After many centuries, this shoot grew into a giant tree. It was then cut down to build a bridge, which the Queen of Sheba passed across when she was on her way to visit King Solomon. As she traveled over the wooden bridge, she saw a terrible vision and warned Solomon that the future Savior of the world would be killed using a wood from the bridge. This, foretelling the end of the Jewish kingdom, Solomon hid the wood from the bridge in a swamp.
From the Queen of Sheba to Saint Helena the fantastical tale of the True Cross was part of the Medieval imagination down into the Renaissance, when Piero della Francesca painted his frescoes in the Basilica of San Francesco in Arezzo between 1450-1460.
Standing side-by-side in the apse first thing in the morning, my husband and I had the place to ourselves. The paintings overwhelmed—almost pressing me into the ground with their power. Then, when I turned to my new husband, I saw tears in his eyes.
4) In the crowd, we see Caterina Corner, the former Queen of Cyprus.
The question arises: what was Caterina Corner, the former Queen of Cyprus, doing in Gentile Bellini’s painting?
Bellini painted the picture in 1500, when the relic had been in Venice around one hundred and fifty years and was already legendary for performing miracles-- like curing a man of madness (as painted by Carpaccio) and reviving the dying son of a merchant from Brescia (as painted by Bellini in the other picture). Despite the fact that the miracle occurred long before Bellini was born, he did not hesitate to add people from his own time. Perhaps Bellini added the luminous Queen because of her legendary star-power. But there is also a more intricate web weaving her into this story.
Cyprus has traditionally been included in the tale of the True Cross. Another medieval legend told of the Empress Helena stopping on the island on her way back to Rome from Jerusalem. Trying to pacify evil demons who were bothering the local inhabitants, Helena was said to have hidden numerous fragments of the True Cross around the island. The Cyprus connection could be another reason Bellini painted the former queen so prominently in the picture.
And the relic did come from Cyprus. It came to Venice in the possession of Philippe de Mézières, who was chancellor to the Cypriot King Peter of Lusignan. Peter reigned from 1358 -1369 over what was the world’s last crusader kingdom. The two men—Philippe and his King, -- formed an alliance of friendship and faith based on their shared dream of reclaiming the Holy Land. Joining forces with Peter Thomas, the future Latin patriarch of Constantinople, they traveled from court to court around Europe trying to drum up support for a new crusade. It was Peter Thomas who gave Philippe the relic.
Philippe had brought the relic with him to Venice, where he was working to persuade the Venetians to join the new. But after receiving the devastating news that the King had been assassinated, Philippe withdrew into seclusion (with the relic) at the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista. Later, he would reward the Scuola for their two years of spiritual support and comfort by donating the precious relic to them in 1369.
Seven more kings followed Peter of Lusignan to rule the island before Caterina Corner became the Queen. Born in Venice, she was married off to King James II in 1468 as a young girl. Sadly, the king died almost as soon as she arrived on the island. Though she was pregnant at the time of her husband’s death, the baby would die as well. Given this sad turn of events, she was pressured to cede her kingdom to the doges of Venice. In compensation, she was allowed to keep her title and crown and to reinvent herself as the Lady of Asolo, after being granted the fiefdom in Veneto, in 1489. Her court at Asolo was later immortalized, first as the fictitious setting for Pietro Bembo's platonic dialogues on love, Gli Asolani, and later by Robert Browning in his poetry collection Asolando. There is also Donizetti’s wondrous opera, Caterina Cornaro. I am surprised we haven’t had “Catarina: the Movie” yet!
It is not hard to understand why she appeared so prominently in paintings, poetry and in music. She was like a movie star. Painted by Titian, Giorgione, Belleni, and Durer, Catarina was both dazzling and tragic. Perhaps not unlike Lady Diana. Her depiction in Bellini’s painting only made the miracle at the Bridge of San Lorenzo even more miraculous.
Books
The Anxieties of a Citizen Class: The Miracles of the True Cross of San Giovanni Evangelista, Venice 1370-1480 by Kiril Petkov
Daughter of Venice: Caterina Corner, Queen of Cyprus and Woman of the Renaissance by Holly S. Hurlburt