Bocca della Verità

The Bocca della Verità is an old marble mask walled in the wall of the pronaos of the church Santa Maria in Cosmedin of Rome going back to 1632.

History

The sculpture, which dates from Ier century after J.C, has a diameter of 1,75 m and represents a bearded male face of which eyes, the nose and the mouth are drilled and hollow.

But its functions are dubious: fountain or stops sewer of impluvium, even of cesspool (assumptions probably related to the proximity of the site in Cloaca Massima)

Anecdotes

What is certain, contrary, is that the mask jouït of an ancient and legendary fame: it would be the object mentioned at the 11th century in the first " Mirabilia Urbis Romae " where is registered: " AD sanctam Mariam in Fontana, templum Fauni; quod simulacrum locutum is Iuliano and decepit eum " (" Close to the church of Santa Maria in Fontana the temple of Fauna is. This show spoke in Julien and " misled it; )

A German text of the 12th century describes in detail how, through the mouth, the devil - identified in Mercure (protective of the trade and also of the swindles) - lengthily retained the hand of Julien the Apostate (which had swindled a woman and was to swear on this idol its bona fide) promising to him at the end the repurchase of its miserable heart and great fortunes if it gave to the last style the pagan divinities.

In another German legend going back to two centuries after this one, we find the image of the mouth which " do not dare " to bite the hand of a Roman empress who - although it had actually betrayed her husband - horn the mouth by a logical stratagem.

At the 15th century, Italian and German travellers remember this stone " who names stone of the truth and who formerly had the virtue to show when a woman had disobeyed her mari".

The name " Bocca della Verità " appears in 1485 and the sculpture consequently remained constantly mentioned through Roman curiosities and was frequently reproduced in drawings and sculptures. Of that we retain that it was in the beginning placed outside the porch of the church in which it was moved with the restorations wanted by the Pope Urbain VIII Barberini in 1631.

Files of tourists who still today wait to be made photograph with the hand in the mouth " magic " , one can believe that it continues to be mentioned in the tourist guides.

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