The blonde angel of San Lorenzo in Lucina

Posted on: 1 February 2026

There is a mechanism as old as power itself: when you want to immortalise someone without taking responsibility for it, you let a devotee do the job. This is how the liturgy of tacit consent operates, and this is how one explains the angel bearing the face of Giorgia Meloni that has materialised in the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Lucina following a recent restoration.

The facts, first. La Repubblica newspaper published photographs of one of two cherubs flanking the marble bust of Umberto II of Savoy in the Chapel of the Crucifix. The angel on the right, holding a scroll depicting the outline of Italy, now presents features strikingly reminiscent of the Italian Prime Minister. The restorer is Bruno Valentinetti, an 83-year-old sacristan and self-taught decorator who lives in the parish on a social pension of six hundred euros a month. His signature appears clearly on the work: Instauratum et exornatum, Bruno Valentinetti AD MMXXV.

Valentinetti denies everything, naturally. He claims to have merely restored what was already there twenty-five years ago, during the Jubilee of 2000, when he created the original work on commission from the House of Savoy. The parish priest confirms he had only requested a faithful restoration. The Vicariate has launched an investigation. The Culture Ministry has ordered an inspection. The opposition is crying scandal. And Meloni herself posted the image on Instagram with the comment: "No, I definitely don't look like an angel", followed by a laughing emoji.

For British readers unfamiliar with the finer points of Italian political theatre, some context may be useful. San Lorenzo in Lucina is not just any church. It is one of the oldest basilicas in Christendom, consecrated in 440 AD by Pope Sixtus III. It sits a few metres from Palazzo Chigi, the seat of the Italian government. The same piazza once housed the office of Giulio Andreotti, the seven-time prime minister who embodied Christian Democratic power for half a century, as well as the headquarters of Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia. For decades, this has been the spiritual drawing room of the Italian centre-right, the place where politics genuflected on Sunday mornings before returning to Monday's skirmishes.

The iconographic context is equally eloquent. The angel bearing Meloni's alleged likeness does not watch over just any saint, but over the funerary monument of Umberto II of Savoy, Italy's last king. The inscription beneath the bust recalls how the sovereign, "Christianly resigned to divine will", preferred exile to civil war. The King of May, who reigned for thirty-four days before a referendum abolished the monarchy in 1946. The angel with the Prime Minister's features, holding the Italian peninsula in its hands, is thus placed visually in the continuity of Italian monarchy, a symbolic guardian of the nation. If the intention were homage, one would have to admire the refinement of the choice.

Then there is the restorer himself, a character who might have wandered out of an Elena Ferrante novel had Ferrante written about the minor figures of the Italian far right. A former activist of the MSI, the neo-fascist party, from the days of Giorgio Almirante. A candidate in 2008 for La Destra and Fiamma Tricolore, a far-right coalition, in Rome's first municipality. A decorator who once worked on Silvio Berlusconi's residence in Macherio. Now he lives on parish charity, "grateful to the priest who takes me in". When journalists pressed him, he responded with the detachment of a man who has seen enough not to be impressed: he mentioned that the other angel bears the face of a former flame of his, joked that his favourite politician is Pol Pot, then returned to his position that he merely restored what was already there.

The deniability mechanism is, one must admit, rather elegant. If the original looked like this in 2000, twenty-five years ago, then no one can accuse anyone of anything. The restorer simply did his job. The priest did not know. The Vicariate is surprised. The Superintendency had been notified of restoration works "without modifications", as per an email from 2023. Everyone looked, no one saw. It is the logic of plausible deniability brought into sacred art: the homage exists, but officially does not. Responsibility is diffused until it dissolves entirely. Meanwhile, the image circulates.

There is something specifically Italian in all this, something that reaches back to a tradition as long as the peninsula's history. In Renaissance art, it was perfectly normal for patrons to be portrayed as sacred figures: the Medici as Magi, popes as saints. It was a way to sanctify temporal power through religious iconography. The difference is that back then, the patron paid, assumed responsibility, and the homage was explicit. Here, the devotee operates in shadow, the beneficiary denies with elegance, and the institutional control system reveals itself as empty formality.

Because this is the most revealing aspect of the affair: the complete failure of the oversight chain. A decorative intervention on a protected cultural asset, in a fourth-century basilica, steps from Parliament, should have passed through multiple levels of approval. The parish priest, the Vicariate, the Superintendency, the Office for Religious Buildings. All had been informed since 2023. None verified what was actually happening. Only when the photographs ended up in newspapers did the investigation begin. It is the classic pattern of accountability theatre: institutions exist, procedures are in place, but they function only when the media is watching. The rest of the time, an octogenarian sacristan can transform an anonymous cherub into the face of power, and no one notices, or wishes to notice.

Meloni's response was, one must concede, communicatively impeccable. "No, I definitely don't look like an angel" with emoji is the perfect balance of distance and self-deprecation. She neither confirms nor denounces nor expresses outrage. She lets the image live its media life. If scandal mounts, she joked about it. If it passes, the homage remains. It is a sophisticated version of the same deniability mechanism operating at the execution level: no one asked for anything, no one is responsible, yet the result exists.

The most honest thing one can say is that this affair proves nothing specific about Meloni or her government. There is no evidence of a commission, an order, direct involvement. What it does reveal with clarity is how the ecosystem of symbolic power functions: there are always devotees ready to honour the prince without the prince having to ask; there are always institutions that look without seeing; there is always a way to make things happen while maintaining formal deniability.

Valentinetti will return to his duties as sacristan. The angel will most likely remain where it is, because removing it would create more clamour than leaving it be. The next time someone enters the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Lucina, they will see a blonde cherub with Italy in its hands watching over the funerary monument of the last king, metres from where the first female Prime Minister governs. Coincidence, faithful restoration, spontaneous homage: it matters not. What matters is that the image exists, and will continue to exist.

As ever in Italy, where symbols have lives of their own, and power never needs to ask explicitly in order to be celebrated.