ROMANESQUE PAINTER, Italian
(active in the 13th century in Rome)

Three Messengers

13th century
Fresco
Santi Quattro Coronati, Rome

The picture shows a detail of the early thirteenth-century fresco cycle in the Chapel of St Sylvester in Santi Quattro Coronati. It shows the three messengers sent from Constantine to Pope Sylvester. The work is an outstanding example of medieval Roman art.: it relates the legend of the Pope miraculously curing Emperor Constantine by baptizing him - an event which led to the establishment of papal sovereignty.