Popular Sacred Art, 1
For our international visitors: a new, ongoing series of images taken by yours truly.
Popular devotion in Italy comes in all sizes: small, big and over the top.
As usual, it’s at its best when it’s at its most sincere, which often means: off the beaten track.
In the big cities there’s real art: the big names, the wealthy families, the famous artists.
But if you are looking for the heartfelt, the naïve, the ludicrously simple-minded, you have to wander.
In small communities, religion was the most important social glue. Churces were built with donations provided by the whole community. Paesants and miners would erect chapels to provide themselves with some kind of protection that was unattainable by human means.
Mercy is the strongest feeling you get. Mercy from a lifetime of troubles and suffering: it’s no wonder why popular devotion praises martyrs above all other saints. They are the only ones who suffered even more, and got their reward in heaven. Faith in a simple, blissful salvation provided by a smiling Madonna.
Their faces: they are the faces of real people. Painted by wandering artists, some of their names forever lost to us, who would choose their models among local maids, washerwomen, paesants. Saints share the same features of those who worshipped them. Which is just as well.
S. Agata
Taken in the local church on Isola dei Pescatori (Fishermen's island), a small island near the shores of Lago Maggiore, in Northern Italy.
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