The Mother and the Cross

By Elisabetta Sgarbi

DVD + Book Available On IBS

A massive piece of art shaped as a Greek cross.
An architecture designed by Bramante in 1513 and frescoed in every corner.
A sanctuary that required 200 years to finish, humiliated with rough plastering that covered most of its frescoes, and now slowly getting back to life.
A point of attraction that captured Teodorico Moretti Costanzi (a philosopher who belonged to those very territories) during his studies over the Crucifixion, and that Vittorio Sgarbi, art critic, has been enhancing for years, in order to keep the renovation going on.

In this Marian monument, the Sanctuary of Mongiovino, in Umbria, a few kilometres away from Lake Trasimeno, the sight of Elisabetta Sgarbi made is way through, so as to observe closer than ever the majestic frescos by Johannes Wraghe (1567), Niccolò Circignani known as il Pomarancio (1569-70), Giovan Battista Lombardelli (1567), Arrigo Van den Broeck (1564) and Orazio di Paride Alfani (1552).

In a path that goes from the Crucifixion to the Deposition, the Resurrection and the Assumption, passing through Mary’s story of grace and humility, Elisabetta Sgarbi manages to depict all the distance that divides the two world that coexist in any sacred representation: the triumphant world of God, in Heaven, and the confused, defeated one of Humanity, that cannot comprehend, either God or itself.
Unable to understand the mysteries of Faith, men are left with only a few closed books, that will never speak to them, and two footprints of the One who raised forever in Heaven, leaving on Earth his feet as compromising memories of an earthly walk now over. In the centre of the scene, a canopy that handles to the Divine the Humanity of the Holy Virgin, there is the Mother of God, an icon of pain that connects every cross in the world.