Sunday, August 22, 2010

EX VOTI

0n one my earliest trips to Rome I found myself in the open air market located in Campo de' Fiori.  Among the hordes of tourists and locals, fish, flowers, vegetables, and bric a brac,  I spied a pushcart filled with Victorian postcard erotica and a variety of metal ornaments.  Those ornaments turned out to be ex voti,  votive offerings to a saint or divinity given in thanks or in hopes of grace.  These models of miraculously healed body parts are placed in church chapels by the worshippers as evidence of their faith.  I collect them for their simple sculptural forms,  their patina of age and intention,  and their mystical cache.

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