Italian Priest

As my little Sicilian village grows, it's become clear that it needs a priest to tend to the needs of the residents and to be in charge of the church.  I recently found a couple of Russian priests, but these fine gentlemen would not be acceptable to minister to Roman Catholics in Sicily!  So I started a search for a suitable mid-20th century Italian priest.  There's a great variety of mediaeval and dark ages priests available, even suitable priests and monks for Napoleonic Spain.  To my eyes, however, none of these look right for 1940s Italy.  I discussed this with my friend Doug, who simply reached into his collection of unpainted miniatures and gave me a plastic Perry Miniatures ACW officer in a frock coat.

I took a cut away his sword and pistol, and also trimmed his moustache.  I also extended his frock coat with some green stuff.  An Italian priest would likely wear a biretta, but that would exceed my meagre modelling skillz.  So instead I gave him a simple skull cap (aka zucchetto).  I kept the officer's sash to be the priest's fascia.  A village priest would likely have plain black fascia and zucchetto, but that would be pretty boring or even invisible against the black cassock, so instead I promoted him to monsignor so that he'd be allowed to wear purple.  As I painted him, I was reminded of Sir Alec Guiness and Leo McKern in Monsignor Quixote, a 20th-Century retelling of Don Quixote set in Spain shortly after the end of Franco's regime.  

His face is a little unfortunate.