Rediscovered Raphael: The quest to save the De Brécy Tondo for the nation

The De Brécy Tondo, a circular devotional painting of the Madonna and Child, is the subject of 40 years’ meticulous research as a putative work by the Italian Renaissance master Raphael. It has recently been confirmed to be by Raphael by the latest AI analysis of a team of expert scientists, researching pro bono, from the universities of Bradford and Nottingham, led by Professor Hassan Ugail, director of Bradford’s Centre for Visual Computing.

Professor Howell Edwards’s book, A Raphael Madonna and Child Oil Painting: A Forensic Analytical Evaluation, recounts in fullest detail the history of the forensic analysis of the painting that has culminated in confirmation that it was created by Raphael.

Research reveals the Tondo to have been a work cherished by Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I, in her devotion to the Virgin Mary as her patron saint. At a time when such Catholic images were being gifted to Henrietta Maria by the papacy to bolster her Catholic faith, they were under the greatest threat from the anti-Catholic sentiments that proliferated in England and Wales in the first half of the 17th century. Many such paintings were destroyed, both in London and the provinces, in the period leading up to and during the Civil War.

It was a critical time of Catholic recusancy, when Catholics had to practise their faith in secret. Several courtiers, such as the Welsh baronet Sir Richard Wynn, Henrietta Maria’s treasurer and receiver-general from 1629 until his death in 1649, were entrusted to safeguard such royal treasures. Gwydir Castle at Llanrwst, the Wynns’ ancestral home, was an ideal safe house for such contentious artefacts during the English Civil War – a fortified Tudor mansion with dungeons, secret passages and a priest hole, where Catholic rites could secretly be conducted. The Tondo was sold in 1981, from the estate of one of Wynn’s descendants.

From July 2023 to January 2024, the picture was on public display for the first time at an exhibition held at the Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford. This attracted many visitors from the UK and abroad, with extensive media coverage nationally and internationally. It highlighted the rapidly growing influence of AI in the assessment of works of art as a vital tool to connoisseurs in their understanding and appreciation. Professor Ugail has pioneered and developed an algorithm specifically for this purpose.

Backed by peer-reviewed papers, his analysis of the Tondo, initially by comparison of the facial features of the Madonna and Child with those in the Sistine Madonna – an identical match – convinced him the Tondo is the work of Raphael, as a study for the celebrated altar piece. This analysis was followed by his “whole painting” comparison with 32 authentic works by Raphael, in the characteristics of colour, texture, tonal values, hue and brush-stroke. The 99 per cent similarity further convinced him the Tondo is the work of Raphael.

The research has benefitted from the interest of the Catholic Church in England and Wales in staging exhibitions of a full-size replica of the work. In 2000, an exhibition was held at Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, which moved to the Church of St Mary Moorfields in London in 2001. In May 2012, the replica was displayed in St Patrick’s Chapel at Westminster Cathedral, alongside a photograph of the equivalent detail of the Sistine Madonna.

After 40 years of dedicated research, the De Brécy Trust, which now owns the painting, wishes to transfer the Tondo to a UK collection or collector as an important part of British Catholic heritage, rather than to see it sold abroad. As a charitable, not-for-profit body, it seeks only the recoupment of the research costs.

Timothy Benoy is honorary secretary of the De Brécy Trust. Visit debrecy.org.uk

Photo: The ‘De Brécy Tondo’.

This article appears in the special December/January 2024 double edition of the Catholic Herald. To subscribe to our award-winning, thought-provoking magazine and have independent, high-calibre, counter-cultural and orthodox Catholic journalism delivered to your door anywhere in the world click HERE.

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