A Pontifical Procession celebrating the Feast of Corpus Christi, under the Colonnade of Saint Peter's, Rome

The feast of Corpus Christi is celebrated on the first Thursday after Trinity Sunday, and is one of the major feasts of the Roman calendar. Naturally the feast was at its most splendid in the Vatican. In the present picture we see one stage of the festivities, which takes place under the colonnade of Saint Peter's, the procession of papal parasols in the form of huge conical tents surmounted by orbs and crosses. Between the parasols are acolytes wearing albs and carrying standards surmounted by the papal emblem of the tiara between crossed keys, a bell and a cartouche inscribed in the left-hand example with the words 'S. MARCO'. These curious papal parasols can still be found today, notably in Orvieto, Saint-Rémy de Tours, and in Sanit-Benoît-sur-Loire.

Through the colonnade we glimpse a view of a ramp (which no longer exists today) leading up to the Palazzo della Propaganda Fede on the Janiculum hill.

The enigmatic artist Jean-Robert Ango, who was in Rome at the same time as Hubert Robert, executed a drawing in black chalk based closely on the present picture (fig. a). Like Robert and Fragonard, he supplied the Abbé de Saint-Non with drawings to be engraved in the latter's Griffonis. Ango seemed to be a somewhat uninventive artist, as almost all his known works are copies of drawings, paintings and sculptures by other artists.

The present picture will be included in the Wildenstein Institute's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the paintings of Hubert Robert.