What’s this exciting installation that alone fills an entire medieval hall in Milan’s Duomo Museum, the former royal palace? Maybe some kind of modern Madonna statue, like the one set up in recent years next to the gate of the Roman Ghetto, in the Chapel of the Rose of Zion, where the local Jews had to listen to Dominican sermons every Saturday for centuries, just to get a shot at conversion?
Nope. It’s much more like a spontaneous folk creation, built step by step with no overarching plan, growing organically under the hands of local craftsmen given a project of never-before-seen scale, letting them unleash their inner child. Like the reinforced concrete church in Ukraine with its postmodern, constructivist formwork.
The fate of these makeshift constructions is usually to vanish—unless they were intended to hide a permanent structure. Like the iron structure in Milan, which isn’t a contemporary work as you might think at first glance, but a 250-year-old steampunk. Back in 1770, it lightened and made portable the enormous figure of the Virgin carried in the Assumption Day procession. Giuseppe Antignati’s carved head is still there in the exhibit, alongside the small model showing how the folds of the clothing were arranged along the structural lines cleverly welded here and there. Just like in the Ukrainian formwork, the secondary structure turns out to be way more fascinating than the final concept it was meant to support.
Esteban Salas (Santiago de Cuba, 1725-1803): Assumpta est Maria. Teresa Paz, Ars Longa de la Havane, Maitrise de la Cathédral de Metz
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