Description of the artwork «Scene of pilgrimage»
This great painting of Jean-Claude Bonnefond survives for now (I could not find the painting anywhere) in form of a black and white lithography by Charles Motte, printed by Hyacinthe Louis Victor and Jean Baptiste Aubry-Lecomte, now in the Inventory of the British Museum.
In the foreground a woman in eastern European dress (the ciociaro costume of the Campagna Romana) lies collapsed on the road, supported by an older woman similarly attired, while a monk crouches next to her and bandages her foot, just behind them a girl huddles against her father who wears a pilgrim's hat and carries an ornate staff, to leave another monk pours a liquid from a small glass vessel onto a handkerchief; further away to right a monk, carrying a tray with refreshment, talks to a woman standing amid columns as he descends the steps of a building, part of a monastery (?) set within fortified walls with a squat turret and a tower topped by a cross rising above the walls.