The Madonna della Misericordia of Rimini Moves Her Eyes

Giuseppe Soleri Brancaleoni, a Rimini painter of sacred subjects, made it in 1796 for his sister, a cloistered Clarissan nun. That year an image in Rimini was reported to move its eyes. The nun could not leave the convent to see it. So her brother painted her a copy, though sources differ on which original he followed. On 17 July 1810 the canvas was placed on the high altar of Santa Chiara. From 1824 the church was in the care of the Missionaries of the Precious Blood.

11 May 1850. Evening. By the sanctuary's history, the eyes began to move that day. One account names the first witness as Anna Bugli. As she gazed at the image, the eyes "lifted and disappeared beneath her eyelids". Then they gently lowered and looked directly at her. Other versions tell of two young women who came back with friends the next day, or of three women praying on Sunday 12 May.

By the 12th, a crowd had come. The pupils rose toward the sky and seemed to come back down toward the faithful. Sometimes they had "the splendor of shining stars." At other times they were "veiled in tears." The sanctuary says the eyes also moved from side to side. A contemporary Spanish broadside said the eyelids opened and closed, and that members of a mission confraternity knelt at the sight.

The broadside reported that police were needed to keep order. The Madrid Catholic paper La Esperanza carried reports in June and July 1850. More than twenty days, said the broadside. Until 17 November, says the sanctuary. Eight consecutive months, say other local accounts. Within six months a new church stood to hold the crowds, built from donations to designs by Giovanni Benedettini.

Bishop Salvatore Leziroli of Rimini opened a canonical process. Italian sources say Pius IX asked for it, so the event would have unquestionable historical certainty. Witnesses testified. The result was favourable, and the Madonna della Misericordia was proclaimed patroness of the city and diocese of Rimini. Pius IX honoured the image with a crown and a frame of gold, silver and precious stones. Some sources date this to 15 August 1850. Others say 1851.

One account describes a stricter test. The night of 9 and 10 December 1850. Seven men, three clergy and four laymen, kept watch in the church before the painting. With two needles they fixed a thread across the canvas just below the Virgin's eyes. During a novena, all seven reported seeing the pupils rise almost out of sight under the upper lid, then return. The report comes from J. Spencer Northcote, writing in The Rambler. Whether the test was made on the Rimini canvas itself remains unconfirmed.

Not everyone was persuaded. In London, Brewin Grant published Rimini and Oxford, a Protestant polemic "dedicated without permission to Pius IX". No source alleges tampering with the canvas. Perceptual explanations, never raised in the case literature itself, include eye drift in dim candlelight, flicker on varnish, and a praying crowd's expectation at the Salve Regina's plea for her eyes of mercy.

The canvas is still on the high altar of what is now the Santuario della Madonna della Misericordia in Santa Chiara, near the Arch of Augustus. Every 12 May a procession through Rimini marks the feast, and a Mass is said on the 12th of every month. The case stands beside other moving-eyed Marian images of the Papal States, from the 1796 wave in Rome, Ancona and Rimini to a later report at Vicovaro.