Holy card Sacred Heart of Jesus Fratelli Bonella die-cut

Italian holy card of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, issued by Fratelli Bonella of Milan, bearing serial number 197-I.G.1 and the FB anchor mark on the reverse. The card has a die-cut edge with scalloped contours and an inlaid gilt linework framing the image, an execution generally attributed within the Bonella corpus to the nineteen-fifties and sixties. The reverse is blank. The card is in good condition.

Christ is shown frontally, both arms opened in a gesture of welcome, draped in a red mantle over a pale tunic, with the flaming heart at his breast encircled by the crown of thorns and surmounted by a cross. Behind him opens a wide mountainous landscape under a golden evening sky, a compositional variant often employed during the twentieth century to align the figure of the Sacred Heart with that of Christus Salvator Mundi. Devotion to the Sacred Heart, formalised after the visions of Margaret Mary Alacoque at Paray-le-Monial in 1673 and inscribed by Pope Pius IX as a universal feast in 1856, received in the post-war period, through Italian publishers such as Bonella, a refined graphic codification distributed across the parishes of the Latin world.