Portrait of Bishop Gaspard Mermillod

Portrait of Bishop Gaspard Mermillod is an originalartowork realized by an artist belonging to the Roman School of 19th Century

Mixed colored oil on canvas.

The bishop depicted in the painting examined here, as suggested by the coat of arms represented at the top left, is the Swiss Gaspard Mermillod, born in Carouge on 22 September 1824.
Mermillod is known to have been one of the most active representatives of social Catholicism and one of the eminent personalities who formed in Rome that "select committee" set up in 1882 by Pope Leo XIII, aka Gioacchino Pecci, also involved in relevant social issues, in particular, to the working class. The international meetings between social Catholics and social Christians promoted by Mermillod led to the creation of the Union of Friborg, where problems such as trade unionism, the corporate regime, the organization of industry, the agrarian question, wages, workers' insurance were addressed. and the international regulation of industrial production. The Union of Friborg is considered one of the organizations that inspired Leo XIII's encyclical Rerum Novarum of May 15, 1891. In 1890 Mermillod was appointed cardinal in the consistory of June 23 and moved to Rome, where he died on February 23, 1892.
The inscription "Carpineto Romano" which can be read at the top right of the painting is probably to be interpreted as a possible reference to the birthplace of Leo XIII, under whose pontificate, as we have seen, Mermillod was elected cardinal.
The dating of the portrait, based on the coat of arms represented in the painting, should be limited to the 1880s, when Mermillod was bishop of Lausanne and Geneva. The etching by Léopold Flameng (1831-1911), which derives from a painting by Juliette de Bourge (?) (Geneva Library), dates from the same years. Another portrait of the bishop, painted in 1887 by C. Hildebrand (?), Is in the Museum of Carouge.

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