Restoration of the painting of Santa Rosalia, painted between the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, by the painter Giuseppe Velasco

In the context of the Rosalian Jubilee Year, which commemorates the fourth centenary of the discovery of the body of Saint Rosalia, the restoration of the painting of Saint Rosalia, preserved in the Chapel dedicated to her, has begun in recent days at the laboratory of the Diocesan Museum of Palermo dedicated in the Cathedral. It is the iconography that represents her for the people of Palermo and her devotees, a canvas painted between the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, by the painter Giuseppe Velasco, also the author of several canvases preserved in the Cathedral. The work represents the Saint with two typical elements of her iconography, the crown of roses and the lily, flowers that refer to her name, Rosa-lilium: the rose indicates flowering beyond thorns after a life of hardship and renunciation , the lilium, or lily, is a sign of purity and virginity. Rosalia is like the woman who seeks her beloved, Christ, who in the Song of Songs says: “I am the rose of Saron, the lily of the valleys. Like a lily among thorns”.

At the end of the works, the restoration of the seventeenth-century frontal will begin, which depicts Santuzza in ecstasy as can be admired in the statue of the cave of the Montepellegrino sanctuary, and of the paintings, including frames, of the side chapels.