LE STORIE DI S. NICOLA
permanent light installation
Approx 11 x 3 mt
2019

“Chiassi a fil di luce” permanent installation – MACCA Museum, Peccioli (PI)

by Comune di Peccioli
Directed by Alberto Bartalini
curated by Carlo Alberto Arzelà

“The stories of Saint Nicholas” is a new chapter of this project and is inspired by the painting of Saint Nicholas that is located inside the Church of San Verano in Peccioli mede of three different parts.

In the first part, to the ceiling, the backlit details of the painting form a ‘new constellation’ where the stars (disks) reflects the main human figures of the painting and are joined by lines representing other details, as the dress of the Saint, the towers and colonnades of the scenes of the painting. The second part, ‘Serpe’ is inspired by the constellation ‘Serpens’ (snake) included in the stars atlas Uranometria of the German astronomer j. Bayer (1572-1625) and is linked to the third part of the installation that is intended as a hypothetical and ironic’s ‘purloining’ of the painting of the true Saint of Peccioli, San Verano, which is located at the Brera art gallery in Milan.

The “purloining”
The misunderstanding arises from the fact that in the same church of Peccioli was exposed a representative painting of San Verano and episodes of his life that had probably been stolen in the early 19th century. When the two paintings reappeared on the antiquities market, Giuseppe Toscanelli, not knowing specifically the lives of the two Saints, he ended up choosing the wrong painting because the two works was very similar. So the St. Nicholas arrived in Peccioli and San Verano ended up in Gerri’s private collection in Milan from where it moved to the Pinacoteca di Brera.

ARTWORKS