The school opened on Saturday 4 May Exhibition on the Majesties of the Massese territory which it will remain open and can be visited inside the convent of the Capuchin Friars of Massa, every Saturday afternoon in May from 5pm to 7pm. The exhibition is the result of an educational action developed at the beginning of the 90s in Malaspina Middle School with the students of a 2nd year and assisted by a group of teachers and some parents with artistic skills when taking the casts.SIt concerns an exhibition of bas-reliefs reproducing the Majesties through casts which, at the time, were mapped and described in an excellent volume which we are trying to republish, should financiers be found interested in this work of construction and maintenance of a very important devotional memory. The presentation saw enthusiastic communication of the then principal Gino Cappè, which traced the work carried out by the teachers Talini, Palmieri, Parodi and the late Ernesto Giannotti; with the technical collaboration of Fabio Grassi, Lanfranco Martinucci and the willingness to be interviewed by the then Monsignor Ugo Berti and the lawyer. Giovanni Martini. Followed by the architect Colle and professor Aladino Landi, to whom we owe the credit of having safeguarded this splendid artistic work.A work of great detail and value which risked not being able to be shown to the city and which, thanks to the coordination work at the time of Ladino Landi and his desire to preserve this collective heritage by recovering it from the inevitable abandonment given the limited space in the schools and, donating it to“Father Damiano da Bozzano” Association that guarantees its preservation, so that popular devotion finds, in the very memory of the visitors to this exhibition, those automatic and heartfelt evocations that have been lost over the years as well as that sense of belonging and care for the territory in which we live. The faithful reproductions of the Majesties are also available to those who, waiting for the right period of realization, wish to acquire them to embellish and enrich private and public spaces suitable for decorously welcoming this masterful synthesis of religiosity inherent in the populations. The Majesties, in their historiographical value as well, have the characteristic of being typical of a geographical area that includes the Province of Massa Carrara and Versilia. Although it was a pertinent observation, in the Massa area there are archetypes that can be traced back to the Madonna of Loreto, to the role of protector of the Virgin, to the duality with the Child and to the universalistic symbolism that popular devotion has used, combining it with the Great Devotional Paths such as the Via Francigena to mark the stages of routes, even of a few tens of meters, positioning these “margins” in order to give orientation, as well as of faith, also geographical so much so that often the toponymy itself has remained marked.Among the audience were some students “from back then” and many people who at the time collaborated in this climate of interaction between the “Malaspina” Middle School and all those who were connected to it.
