The cult of St. Michael the Archangel in art. The traveling exhibition passes through Ascoli Piceno

From July 29 to November 6, 2022, the Pinacoteca Civica di Ascoli Piceno will host the second stage of the traveling exhibition In the Footsteps of Saint Michael the Archangel. Pilgrims and Devotees in Art, curated by Stefano Papetti, produced by Artifex International and promoted by the Marche Region and the municipalities of Loreto, Ascoli Piceno and Senigallia. The three-stage traveling exhibition project, intended to explore the theme of pilgrimage through works ranging from the Middle Ages to the seventeenth century following the places of worship of St. Michael the Archangel, kicked off in April with its first stop in Loreto; it will now come to Ascoli Piceno, then conclude in the fall in Senigallia.

The pilgrims and devotees who traveled the European routes of faith in large numbers were repeatedly depicted by artists who highlighted their distinctive clothing, with the characteristic signs of the pilgrimage that allowed them to be recognized. The saints invoked along the way, such as St. Roch and St. James the Greater, were depicted by artists in the typical robes of pilgrims on a par with the saints who in the Middle Ages had brought the word of Christ to distant and dangerous places, such as St. James of the Marches always depicted with a broadside.

The exhibition intends to pay tribute to this particular link, and drawing on a rich iconographic heritage, a nucleus of works has been selected to give life to a thematic itinerary that emphasizes some particular elements, such as the pilgrims’ characteristic dress and the insignia displayed to certify that they had undertaken the journey to the holy places. For the most part, these are works from the civic collections of the Marche region, where there is no shortage of masterpieces by authors such as Antonio da Fabriano, Pietro Alamanno, Francesco Guerrieri, Pietro Liberi and Ferdinand Voet, who witnessed this phenomenon of worship between the 15th and 17th centuries. Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli for the first time studies the characteristics of the robes that connote the pilgrims, allowing them to be recognized during the route they traveled.

Also on display in the itinerary are some important processional banners preserved in the Marche region, bearing witness to objects that were fundamental to worship and also representing a pictorial genre, the making of which was made known as early as Cennino Cennini’s famous treatise in the 14th century.

The Ascoli Piceno exhibition will feature an in-depth focus related to territorial devotion, in homage to the micaelic cult present since the time of the Lombards: important medieval, Renaissance and Baroque paintings and sculptures testifying to popular devotion to the figure of St. Michael the Archangel will be on display. In fact, the itinerary, which starts from Mont Saint-Michel and passes through Piedmont to the Sacra di san Michele di san Michele Arcangelo in the Gargano, also touches on the city of Ascoli and the Piceno territory, as attested by various medieval buildings of worship dedicated to the warrior angel. An itinerary of faith retraced thanks to the studies of Maria Elma Grelli, who has reconstructed the events of the micaelic cult in the Piceno region, while Giovanni Morello has investigated the complex iconographic events linked to the warrior angel in East and West.

Among the works that will arrive for the exhibition in Ascoli Piceno is the canvas by seventeenth-century artist Francesco Cozza, recently found in Rome at a convent where it had been hidden under a modern painting so that the nuns would not be disturbed by the vision of the naked devil defeated by an athletic St. Michael the Archangel

Moreover, the persistence in the southern Marche region of the micaelico cult is also evidenced by the work of the greatest Piceno artist of the 20th century, Osvaldo Licini, who, starting with the 1919 canvas entitled Archangel, dedicated himself to delving into this theme to the point of elaborating the famous icons of the Rebel Angels that summarize in them the contrast between Good and Evil.

“This exhibition project, supported by the Marche Region, traverses part of the history of artistic production by focusing on peculiar and fascinating aspects such as the great devotion of pilgrims told in the images and the figure of St. Michael the Archangel,” commented Culture Councillor Giorgia Latini. “Juxtaposing the pilgrims, whose journeys were full of risks and threatened life itself, and the saint who par excellence fights evil means initiating a reflection through art also on the present, on how even today the challenge of good is not without cost and what drives us to accept it. But it also means going back to the past and the great tradition that Catholic worship has left in our region, with a trace that in importance can stand alongside Jerusalem, Rome and Santiago de Compostela.”

Hours: Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Tickets: Full 8 euros, reduced 5 euros.

Image: Vincenzo Pagani, Madonna with Saints Michael, Martin and George, detail

The cult of St. Michael the Archangel in art. The traveling exhibition passes through Ascoli Piceno

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