Chagall's "White Crucifixion", briefly, in Rome.

After a day of contemplating the Julio-Claudian dynasty from the Palatine Hill to the Field of Mars for a specially requested tour, I found myself on the via del Corso by the curiously titled Palazzo Cipolla (in fact named for its nineteenth century architect, Antonio Cipolla). Together with the Palazzo Sciarra Colonna across the road, Palazzo Cipolla forms the new incarnation of the Museo del Corso, inaugurated last week with a free exhibition of Marc Chagall’s 1938 painting “White Crucifixion”.

Marc Chagall, White Crucifixion, 1938. On temporary display at Palazzo Cipolla until 27 January.

A painting once described by Pope Francis as his favourite, it is on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago until 27 January as part of the preparations for the imminent Jubilee.

Chagall was born Moishe Shagall to a Jewish family near Vitebsk in what was then the Russian Empire, and is now Belarus. He would spend much of his life in Paris (he became a naturalised French citizen, stripped for a period during the War when he escaped to the US) and he travelled extensively in the Holy Land, in particular in the early nineteen thirties while working on an ambitious project of etchings illustrating the Old Testament.

His White Crucifixion was painted in the immediate wake of the Kristallnacht, 9-10 November, 1938. The crucifixion becomes a representation of the suffering of the Jewish people, with Christ as a Jewish martyr. Jesus’ Jewishness is emphasised by the prayer shawl around his waist, and the head cloth replacing the crown of thorns. Above his head is the Latin acronym I N R I (Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum; Jesus of Nazereth, King of the Jews), and immediately below written in full in Hebrew. Above —instead of the angels of Christian imagery—we see the Jewish forefathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, together with Rachel in lamentation.