The face of an angel fresco with an uncanny likeness of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has been scrubbed from a wall in a ‍central Rome church, after a political and clerical ​uproar.

The Basilica of San Lorenzo in Lucina is one of the oldest Christian churches in Rome and is known for a marble bust of the last Italian king, Umberto II, who went into exile in 1946.

Above the bust is a fresco of two angels, which were little known until recently.

Last Saturday, La Repubblica newspaper discovered that one of the angels had been altered to look like the 49-year-old prime minister.

“Before the restoration, there was a generic cherub,” it wrote.

“Today, it is the face of the most powerful woman in the country.”

The winged “angel Meloni” held a scroll showing the boot-shaped outline of Italy, while the second angel handed a crown to the Umberto.

“There is indeed a certain resemblance,” the priest of the basilica, Daniele Micheletti, told the ANSA news agency.

“But you would have to ask the restorer why he did it that way. I don’t know.”

The controversy thrust the church – which is just five minutes’ walk from Meloni’s government office – into an unwelcome spotlight as visitors flocked to take photos of the angel.

It also stirred almost immediate outrage among opposition figures and irritation from Cardinal Baldo Reina, Vicar General for ‌the diocese of Rome.

By the time the church opened on Wednesday (local time), the Meloni-like face had been painted over, ‍leaving the angel headless.

“I always said that if [the Meloni image] proved divisive, we would remove it,” church priest Daniele Micheletti told Italian news agency ANSA.

“There was a procession of people that came to see it instead of listening to Mass or praying. It wasn’t ​acceptable.”

The original painting was done in 2000 and has no heritage protection. It was recently restored by its original amateur artist, 83-year-old church volunteer Bruno Valentinetti, who reportedly has long ties to Italy’s conservative movement.

He initially said he saw no resemblance to Meloni and that he had only “restored what was already there 25 years ago”.

“Well, it really was Meloni but in the same style of the fresco that was there before,” he told La Repubblica later.

On Wednesday, Valentinetti was quoted by Repubblica as saying the Vatican had asked him to erase it.

A spokesperson for the Holy See declined to comment.

The Rome diocese said ‍it would release a statement later.

On Saturday, Reina expressed “bitterness” about the incident, ordered an investigation and warned that “images of sacred art and Christian tradition cannot ​be ​misused or exploited”.

The Italian Culture Ministry ​also announced an inquiry, while Meloni laughed off ​the incident.

“No, I definitely don’t look like an angel,” she wrote on an Instagram caption of the a picture of controversial painting, adding a laughing emoji.

La Repubblica said Valentinetti had also done other interior work at San Lorenzo.

He is also said to have been employed by the late conservative populist Silvio Berlusconi, formerly Italy’s prime minister, for renovation work on a villa.