An exhibition of ancient, recently restored ex-votos
An exhibition route that enhances context, devotion and the narrative power of the images
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Ancient restored ex-votos, a fourteenth-century church overlooking Lake Como and a thousand-year-old pilgrimage route. The exhibition design for ‘Per Grazia Ricevuta’ chooses to step back: it lets the context of the Ossuccio Sanctuary and the pathways leading to it speak, and puts each votive tablet in a position to tell its own small story of union between earth and heaven. Illnesses, recoveries, horse accidents, adventurous journeys: the secular visitor finds in the ex-votos their own being at the mercy of events, and discovers the imaginative power of an art considered ‘minor’.
Let the context speak. The exhibition is in two spaces: the Antiquarium Museum and the fourteenth-century church of S. Maria Maddalena. The view over the lake is stunning, over pathways that pilgrims have walked for more than a thousand years.
Let each ex-voto tell its story. Every tablet tells of a union between earth and heaven, between the divine and the profane: illnesses and recoveries, accidents by horse or boat, adventurous journeys…
Telling devotion in a secular world. The emotion reaches the visitor when they discover they resemble the people of the past: today too, in a different way, we are at the mercy of events.
The nobility of ‘folk’ iconography. If anyone expects coarse or crude images, they will be surprised by the narrative force and imaginative power of these paintings; much of our work was devoted to overcoming this prejudice and showing that this art is by no means ‘minor’.
Combining fit-out and site. For us it is better that the virtual visit is not a slavish repetition of the physical one; we prefer to offer two different experiences that mutually multiply the aesthetic, cognitive and emotional experience; indeed, many visitors arrive at the exhibition after browsing the website.
