The exhibition Gratia Plena by Andrea Saltini (Carpi, 1974) is something that was missing: the search for meaning, the definition of a new spirituality, the updating of religious experience through contemporary art.
Entering the Church of Sant’Ignazio in Carpi (home of the Diocesan Museum “Cardinal Rodolfo Pio of Savoy”) the experience of the sacred space occurs, or rather “the experience of meeting one’s deepest self, where questions of meaning arise”as Don Carlo Bellini writes in the introduction to the exhibition catalogue.
Andrea Saltini’s exhibition in Carpi
Andrea Saltini summarizes in 20 works a research which, starting from a spirituality without God, is ultimately a religious experience. What pushes man towards God is probably doubt and the desire to believe: these are forms of energy that tend towards the elusive. Saltini shows us the outcome of a very profound artistic and spiritual researchmoved by a “position of spiritual desire (…) in an energetic, creative and full of potential state”; the works painted and placed in the church of Sant’Ignazio are the result of a mystery which the artist wishes to approach.
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The triptych “Gratia Plena” by Andrea Saltini
Maria, in the triptych Gratia Plena which gives the exhibition its title, is luminous and trembling in resignation, while she is touched, stripped, examined by a crowd of men who surround her, Pharisees doubtful of the conception of Virgin. She, alone. Violated, she advances with dignity into the second canvas, proud and strong of having a miracle within herself which is also the miracle of every new life. In the last canvas theAscension of Mary, between golden tongues that light up the darkness: until the end they asked her to be what she is not, as symbolized by the mask that is insistently stretched on her. But she is safe, true to herself until the end. Mary has the faces of three women: Mary is all women. The three canvases placed side by side have an extraordinary rhythm: the female body releases a luminous force, with composure and tenacity it resists, it does not want to give up.
Violence and sanctity in Saltini’s works
On the opposite side of the church, near the altar and in front of the Mother, the body of Christ pierced by the spear ofLonginus, pale, bloodless. Christ deposed, dead before the observer, makes us perceive the weight of his body, of his guilt. The guilt that pushes Longinus to approach his side and press on the wound inflicted in a desperate attempt to plug it. INRI (San Longino): the protagonist of the composition is precisely that Longinus whom Saltini defines as “saint”. Violence follows the awareness of his own weakness as a man, and then that gesture of desperation, of atonement. And a mistake carried as punishment for the rest of his life, a mistake consigned to history.
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Andrea Saltini’s Caravaggio quotes
Caravaggio uber alles is a contemporary remake of two Caravaggio works: the Deposition and the Crucifixion of Saint Peter. In continuity, the work “baiter of men (ascension of Peter) it symbolizes a return, after the Saint’s death on the cross, to his element of origin: water. In this very earthly substance and in the stretched out position of Peter’s body, Saltini identifies the ascension, traditionally represented as elevation to heaven and here, on the contrary, interpreted as a figure on the ground, ennobled by the water that bathes it.
Gratia Plena it is evidence of the human need for transcend suffering that everyone experiences in their lives.
Saltini’s subjects are unseen and invisible. The author welcomes them into his canvases and makes them bearers of mercy, absolving them of divine dignity. From their mystery, brought to the surface and portrayed by the artist, spirituality releases. There is sacredness in these sufferings welcomed and elevated to universal images, and there is a response to the eternal human tension towards something greater.
Anna Vittoria Zuliani
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