Mutual Pilgrimage between Relic and Devotee: Giacomo Lauro’s Prints of Loreto

The Santa Casa di Loreto, or Holy House of the Virgin Mary in Loreto, Italy, was one of the preeminent Catholic pilgrimage destinations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Lauded as a piece of the Holy Land in papal territories, the Santa Casa was purportedly the home of the Virgin Mary that flew westward with the assistance of angels in the late thirteenth century. What truly set Loreto apart from other pilgrimage destinations at this time was the acknowledged symbiotic relationship of devotees and cult objects on site: generally speaking, neither group originated in this terrain. Both came from elsewhere.

A tour-de-force souvenir print by the Roman engraver Giacomo Lauro, entitled the Descriptio Translationis Sanctae Domus Beatissimae Virginis e Nazareth in Dalmatiam et Inde Lauretum (1580s), represents in epic proportions the mutual pilgrimage at Loreto: while humble devotees walk the multiple popular routes across the Marchegian landscape on the left, the Virgin rides her levitating Santa Casa from the eastern Mediterranean on the right, departing Nazareth for Italy via Croatia. In a combination of topographic contouring and cartographic detail, Lauro pioneered a new category of religious print imagery, wherein devotion melded with innovations in spatial representation for the souvenir market. Beyond commemorating one’s pilgrimage, these objects provided meditative visuals to aspirational devotees unable to make the journey to Loreto, and attested to the relic’s precise miraculous passage over land and sea. This presentation explores Giacomo Lauro’s prints of symbiotic travel, which shaped the pilgrimage destination for wider audiences.