| A freeway under construction, a complicated detour, a wrong choice of lane, a country road, bad weather, a vehicle too slow, a faded yellow sign, a ruin in the fog. A gate, a closed door with an open sign.
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Many people believe they can travel in the multiverse by staying in their beds or armchairs, or even by plugging a tube into their cortex. There are still a few gateways, but you can’t find them by looking for them. Here’s an unexpected one that popped up yesterday. With a bit of luck, it will remain open for a few more months.
The door opens to the main Abbey of Sant’Antonio di Ranverso is a religious complex at Buttigliera Alta, at the end of Val di Susa. The preceptory complex was founded in 1188 by Humbert III of Savoy, who give it to the Regular Canons of St. Anthony of Vienne (Savoy), as a restoration point for pilgrims and a treatment center for people infected by Saint Anthony’s fire or ergot poisoning, later for those affected by the Black Death. “The Black Death was the second great natural disaster to strike Europe during the Late Middle Ages (the first one being the Great Famine of 1315–1317) and is estimated to have killed 30% to 60% of the European population” (Wikipedia)
The pictorial decoration of the abbey church, painted beginning around 1410, constitutes the principal and best-documented surviving evidence of a Piedmontese artist’s long career : Giacomo Jaquerio (ca. 1375–1453).
In the presbytery of the church, which is in a problematic state of preservation, we find frescoed on the left and the right walls, with “the cycle of the Life of St. Anthony Abbot, at the base of which are placed a Christ in Pieta among the symbols of the Passion and passages of peasant life, exquisite for their remarkable realism.” (wikipedia)
Most valuable was the discovery in 1914, during restoration work, of an autograph inscription by Jaquerio in the margin of a fresco of the Madonna Enthroned at the preceptory of St. Anthony in Ranverso. Indeed, it’s the only known signature of this Savoyard artist, for whom handwritten documents exist detailing his biography and career.
In a better state of preservation are the frescoes of the former sacristy, which constitute the artistic jewel of the Abbey; on the vault sails, Four Evangelists and Doctors of the Church.
On the walls: Annunciation, Saints Peter and Paul, the Oration in the Garden and the famous Ascent to Calvary, Jaquerio’s masterpiece, “characterized by markedly realistic tones of cruelty and pain, making it a pictorial piece of great dramatic tension. In the center is the mournful figure of the cross-bearing Christ surrounded by the mass of grotesque, stunned faces of the executioners.” (Wikipedia)
In the Middle Ages, the Antonine order paid particular attention to the patient dismembered by gangrene of the extremities; the disease, ergotism was also called “St. Anthony’s fire”, “St. Martial’s fire”, “fire disease”, “fire plague”, “sacred fire” or “hell fire”, because the patient felt devoured from within by intense burning sensations. Ergot intoxication is one of the medical explanations for certain cases of witchcraft or demonic possession.
Traditionally, ergotism could be caused by eating cereal products contaminated with the fungus Claviceps purpurea, or rye ergot. When crushed by millstones, the ergot, although clearly visible on the grassy plant, turns into a red powder, easily overlooked in dark rye flour.
The gangrenous form begins with itching of the feet, followed by burning hot sensations alternating with intense cold. This is followed by loss of sensitivity, weakening of the pulse and desquamation. Enormous serous-filled vesicles form under the skin, only to rupture and turn into ulcers. Limbs become necrotic with dry gangrene, leading to mutilations that surgeons tried to prevent by performing amputations.
The convulsive form included seizures and painful spasms, diarrhea, headache, nausea and vomiting. Convulsive symptoms are caused by alkaloids such as ergoline. In addition to convulsions, hallucinations resembling those triggered by LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide, of which ergotamine, the ergot alkaloid, is an immediate precursor that inspired chemists), and psychiatric disorders such as mania or psychosis could occur.
But the Last Judgment was reproduced in a drawing that became an engraving in 1540, giving his name and details, and was subsequently used by anti-papist propaganda because of the prelate’s presence in the cauldron of Hell.
Window of the hospital that housed vagrants, sufferers and lepers for centuries; few, if any, came out. Today you risk nothing because no one can even get in.
On a flat map, the Precettoria di Sant’Antonio di Ranverso is near the middle of a straight line running from the Castle of Rivoli to the Sacra di San Michele. In the sensitive three-dimensional world, it’s a different story…
A month ago, an omen might have been interpreted eight hundred years ago as a harbinger: a wild pig on the loose in the streets, but let’s note that it didn’t have any bells on. La Fotografia è la più bella delle collezioni … Senigallia, città della fotografia, ospita un nuovo spazio dedicato alla collezione di fotografie. Atelier 41, si trova 41 via fratelli Bandiera. In preparazione la IV Biennale di Senigallia, estate 2025, conferenza, fiera 13-15 Giugno 2025. Senigallia diventerà la Città delle collezioni.
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