“Destruction or Preservation?: The Meaning of Graffiti at Religious Sites.” In Art, Piety and...

6

Destruction or Preservation? The Meaning of Graffiti on

Paintings in Religious Sites

Véronique Plesch

La vraie mémoire n’est pas un lieu où se capitalisent, en bon ordre, les acquis d’une vie protégée. La vraie mémoire fait mal, elle recèle au fond d’elle‑même un non tenace et rebelle à toutes les intégrations.1 (True memory is not a place where the profits of a protected life are neatly stored. True memory hurts; it prioritizes within itself a tenacious and rebellious no to all a8empts at assimilation.)

In the present, graffiti are, more o>en than not, considered a form of vandalism. When graffiti are found on medieval and early modern paintings, the contemporary viewer invariably recoils before a perceived defacement and destruction of the original intention. But, the scholar responds, is this really so? Are we imposing an unexamined distrust of evidence of the past? As I hope to demonstrate, such marks may not always be destructive and reprehensible interventions. In many cases they are the product of a process of claiming ownership and of prolonging a cultural and geographic a8achment to a site which can become a locus of memory. Rather than objects to be removed, they merit study and preservation for they testify to the continuing power that these works of art exerted on their communities.

The subject of graffiti is a topic that I have studied for a number of years, and, as so o>en the case in scholarship, one that I first encountered serendipitously. In 1992, while researching fi>eenth‑century pictorial Passion cycles painted in small rural chapels in the Duchy of Savoy, I went to Arborio, a small town in the Piedmontese plain, some sixty kilometers west of Milan.2 My goal was to visit and photograph the paintings in the small oratorio of San Sebastiano at the southern edge of town. It turned out to be a small building, unremarkable in its architecture and of an uncertain date.3 Although extensive, the pictorial ensemble was not particularly noteworthy either and, not surprisingly, has received li8le scholarly a8ention (fig. 6.1).4 What caught my a8ention – probably because of their sheer quantity – were the graffiti I noticed on the effigies of saints, as for instance on a depiction of St. Anthony (fig. 6.2):

VIRGINIA CHIEFFO RAGUIN.indb 137 09/02/2010 11:43:48

6.1 Small apse on the south wall of the nave, Oratorio di San Sebastiano, Arborio. Le> to right: St. Anthony Abbo8, Enthroned Virgin and Child with a donor, St. Bernardine of Siena, a bishop saint (St. Fabian?), and St. Sebastian. Above: Crucifixion. On the triumphal

arch: Vision of St. Eustache and Martyrdom of St. Agatha (photo: author)


6.2 St. Anthony Abbo8, Oratorio di San Sebastiano, Arborio (photo: author)


6.4 Detail of graffiti on the figure of St. Sebastian, Oratorio di San Sebastiano, Arborio (photo: author)

6.3 Detail of a graffito on the figure of St. Anthony Abbo8, Oratorio di San Sebastiano, Arborio (photo: author)


Véronique Plesch 141

1570 pestis maxima in partibus lombardie (In 1570 there was the greatest plague in Lombardy) [fig. 6.3]

1592 fuit maxima penuria (In 1592 there was the greatest dearth)

1747 è venuta la abondanza nella … (In 1747 the abundant harvest came in …)

And on St. Sebastian (fig. 6.4):

1673 alli 16 maggio è tempestato dala terra in giu et ha portato via ogni cosa (On 16 May 1673 there has been a storm from Arborio and below and it has taken away everything)5

1661 ali 17 genaro si e seminato de la avena a fato bono proffito G. Gile8a (On 17 January 1661 we sowed oats and made good profit, G. Gile8a)

1654 o8o il mesed di giuno la sesia a menato via il castello (On 30 March 1654 the Sesia took away the castle)

1664 ali 30 marzo è venuto la neve alta un piede (On 30 March 1664 a foot of snow fell)

1745 la morte nelle bestie (In 1745 death for the animals)

Despite the fact that San Sebastiano’s graffiti are gouged deeply into the intonaco (plaster), and so in a sense deface the paintings, these graffiti tell le> me deeply moved. The marks were made a long time ago; they are, in Samuel Butler’s felicitous expression, ‘li8le bits of soul‑fossil.’6 Butler was trying to understand why the sight of a name and a date (1485) scratched on a fresco affected him so, comparing it to that of a fly trapped in amber for eternity:

A fossil does not touch us – while a fly in amber does. Why should a fly in amber interest us and give us a slightly solemn feeling for a moment, when the fossil of a megatherium bores us? I give up; but few of us can see the lightest trifle scratched off casually and idly long ago, without liking it better than almost any great thing of the same, or ever so much earlier date, done with purpose and intention that it should remain.7

Indeed, such marks witness to a presence8 but they also tell a story I could glimpse in the few I hastily deciphered on that first visit – a story that is mostly dramatic (with plagues, wars, epidemics, storms, and snow falls serious enough to be recorded) but also particular as it specifically concerned the small town.

Since that first visit I have returned many times to Arborio. I have recorded some 150 inscriptions, which are all dated and range from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries. As it turns out, Arborio’s graffiti form a homogeneous corpus, a town chronicle of sorts, as they record important events in the life of the community and, although it is unusual to find so many inscriptions in a single place, their content belongs to a practice that deserves more scholarly a8ention.


klm, nopmq krs sptmluvmowr or mxp vxlotmokr yptm, 1500–1700142

Graffiti before Hip‑Hop

In this volume dedicated to the Nachleben of works of art – and in particular to changes in their perception by the public, changes that might involve destruction or preservation – San Sebastiano’s graffiti (and more generally graffiti made on paintings) acquire particular significance as they demonstrate the continuing relevance of artworks, although used in a way that the modern public considers a form of vandalism. And if an aggressive and destructive dimension is not to be ignored, in order to really understand what is going on here and elsewhere, a first step is to replace the phenomenon in the context of graffiti as it was practised in the past.

Despite the abundance of bibliography, as is proven by Detlev Kraack’s and Peter Lingens’s monumental Bibliographie zu historischen Graffiti zwischen Antike und Moderne9 with well over 1,000 entries, and intense research accomplished by passionate individuals,10 the questioning of this particular scriptural practice has only begun. The reasons for the limited amount of analytical scholarship are obvious. First and foremost it is because corpora of graffiti – essential for an in‑depth analysis – are few and are difficult to establish. Luc Bucherie stresses the fortuitous character involved in the establishment of such a corpus, and how dependent it is upon sources which are not always to be fully trusted.11 Furthermore, graffiti seem doomed to be destroyed and to elude scholarly analysis. An obvious reason is the rather bad reputation such scriptural practice has received, as is demonstrated by early modern depictions of places of ill‑repute graced by graffiti. In such paintings, the presence of graffiti acts as a marker, signaling the low social status of the depicted place; for instance, in a brothel scene a8ributed to Jan Sanders van Hemessen where the wall on the background is covered in graffiti (fig. 6.5).

Once a corpus is assembled, one may ask if the usual conception of such inscriptions is correct; that is, is it indeed a scriptural activity always illicit, popular, obscene, anonymous, hasty, informal, and ephemeral?12 ‘Illicit’ is a term that appears with frequency in the definitions of the practice, as it does in the first sentence of the entry on ‘Graffiti’ in The Dictionary of Art.13 Susan A. Phillips defines it as a ‘term applied to an arrangement of institutionally illicit marks in which there has been an a8empt to establish some sort of coherent composition.’ But what about Arborio’s case, where graffiti‑making was carried on for at least four centuries and therefore must have been at least tolerated by the authorities?

The statement that ‘corpora of graffiti are few and difficult to establish’ is perhaps, nowhere else truer than in the case that interests me, that of graffiti made on wall paintings. This type of inscription tends to be considered an aggressive and destructive threat to artwork, and, as such, one that should be eradicated as comprehensively as possible. As a result of conservation, important evidence is o>en destroyed. This is what happened to Giovanni



Canavesio’s 1482 frescoes in the Ligurian chapel of San Bernardo of Pigna, which in recent years have required detachment from the unsound walls and restoration. This example further proves that the covering of graffiti is a ‘normal’ course of action in conservation. Photos taken during a photographic campaign conducted by the Frick Art Library in the 1930s (fig. 6.6) show that the frescoes used to be covered with graffiti, which have been obliterated as much as possible by the conservators (fig. 6.7).14 As I was preparing this chapter, I learned that the recent restoration in the chapel of the Santa Maria dei Campi in Lenta (also called Madonna di Campagna) of a fresco representing St. Anthony Abbo8 has rendered illegible several of the graffiti that could be read when I visited the chapel in 2005 (fig. 6.8).15 Lenta’s graffiti, which appear on a few other frescoes, have been noted by local historians,16 and are very much like Arborio’s. To take a few examples: ‘1531 tempestato forte die 12 Aprilis’ (1531 it stormed strongly on 12 April) and ‘1524 fuit in loco pestis’ (1524 there was a plague in this place). Several inscriptions refer to floods of the Valigone, a canal that runs in the area; for instance: ‘1612 il pº 8bre il gualigone intrò in questa Chiesa’ (1612, on 1 October the Valigone entered this church). Lenta is less than seven kilometers north of Arborio, and its graffiti, along with similar instances to be found in other chapels in the area, suggest a local tradition. What is unusual is that some of the inscriptions on St. Anthony are of a more ‘international’ nature, as they refer to the French revolution and the beheading of Louis XVI.

6.5 Jan Sanders van Hemessen, Merry Company (Tavern Scene),c. 1540 (?), oil on panel, 29 × 45 cm,Inv. no. 558. Photo: Jörg P. Anders, Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin (photo: Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz/Art Resource, New York)


6.6 Giovanni Canavesio, Christ before Pilate, San Bernardo, Pigna. State before restoration (photo: Frick Art Reference Library)


6.7 Giovanni Canavesio, Christ before Pilate, San Bernardo, Pigna. State a>er restoration (photo: author)


6.8 St. Anthony Abbo8, Madonna di Campagna, Lenta (photo: author)



When graffiti on paintings survive, they are hardly ever recorded – or even noticed. They are usually perceived as visual noise, ge8ing in the way of a good ‘reading’ of the painting, and as such the viewer just ‘blocks them out.’17 Ask any art historian if there are graffiti on famous paintings such Gio8o’s at the Arena Chapel and they will say no – or might recognize that they would not be able to tell!18 This has been my experience in recent years. Since I started working on the topic, I have been surprised to discover that many pictorial programs, which I had studied, viewed several times, and thought I knew intimately, held graffiti.

There are cases of graffiti that have been recognized and catalogued – Pompeian graffiti are a prime example – and the bibliography is abundant. For the medieval and early modern periods, there have been some important forays19 but no a8empt to address the issue at a European level across a long period and to explore its deeper meanings.20 Even fewer are the studies about graffiti on wall paintings. A well‑documented and fascinating case is in the castle of Issogne in Val d’Aosta. Graffiti appear on late fi>eenth‑century secular frescoes that decorate the entry porch and that represent market scenes and a variety of shops, as well as soldiers in a tavern. The corpus, published by Omar Bore8az in 1995, largely consists of names (sometimes with dates), proverbs and other aphoristic statements, a few pieces of news, and declarations of the type ‘Viva ….’ Omar Bore8az believes that

… in the late middle ages, there was probably no castle, no church, no guesthouse, no tavern, or other public space that did not reveal on its walls traces of the passage of guests, pilgrims, wayfarers, or customers. In a period of literacy’s renewed expansion, the habit of scratching the exposed surfaces with signs, figures, words, and whole sentences, so diffused in the imperial Roman world, was spreading again, involving both the more cultivated and humbler classes.21

However, once a corpus is assembled, how does one analyze it? What questions should one ask? I would suggest keeping this analytical protocol as simple as possible, using the most basic questions: what?, where?, when?, how?, by whom?, and why? As I do so, I will focus on Arborio and similar instances of graffiti on religious paintings.

What?

The first issue, what?, is easy enough to address, provided one manages to decipher the graffiti. We find, as did Butler, simply names and dates, but also – and very o>en – we find records of important events as at Arborio; for example, in San Zeno in Verona, 1,390 inscriptions record the revolt of the Veronese against Gian Galezzo Visconti. A similar instance in Trento, reads: ‘1407 die Sabati 1 … Fedrigo da Ostarich in Trento … me… e ave la segnoria e l vescovo …’22 (1407 on Saturday 1[6th of the month of April] Frederic of Austria in Trento … the dominion and the bishop).



Arborio’s graffiti are dated records that document specific events, and interestingly they use the same syntactic structure as, for instance, Trent’s inscription. Indeed, all of the 150 or so entries I have deciphered follow the same structure: starting with a date, generally the year first, they record significant events in the life of this community, using a simple vocabulary and grammatical structure that remain constant over the course of the centuries. The majority of the inscriptions are in Italian, and a few, among the earlier ones, are in Latin. The events listed at Arborio can be assigned to several thematic categories, most of which were related to the subsistence of the townspeople, and, sadly enough, most of which were completely out of their control. As would be expected for a rural community,

a significant percentage of the corpus deals with meteorological events, including storms, heavy snow falls, and droughts, but also more exceptional occurrences such a comet in 174423 and an eclipse in 1706. Naturally related to this are observations about crops and livestock, most of them catastrophic: shortages, blight, and epidemics (affecting both humans and animals). Also fundamental for a farming community, in particular in an area where rice had been cultivated since the fi>eenth century, is the ebbing and flowing of the Sesia river. A number of graffiti recount floods of the Sesia, one of them so severe that it destroyed Arborio’s castle (see fig. 6.4). At least a dozen entries are related to wars, while other topics include news of local interest, including the death of notables and construction of roads and bridges.

In addition to those verbal expressions, we should not forget non‑verbal instances. At Arborio we find several instances: stick figures of soldiers (fig. 6.9), heads of a crowned figure, and coats of arms – most recurrently those of Savoy but also those of the Arborio24 and Avogadro25 families.

Where?

This is an essential question. In the case of Arborio, the town’s location explains the cluster of inscriptions relating to war: the town was in a border zone and endured many wars. As subjects of the Duke of Savoy,26 Arborio’s inhabitants experienced the Italian Wars in the sixteenth century, the Wars of Succession of Monferrato and of Spain in the seventeenth century, and the Austrian War of Succession in the eighteenth century. In particular, Arborio suffered from its proximity to the heavily fortified town of Casale Monferrato (46 kilometers south of Arborio) as is proven by a cluster of entries recording events related

6.9 Detail of graffiti on one of the Apostles in the apse (near St. Philip) – stick figure of a soldier, Oratorio di San Sebastiano, Arborio (photo: author)



to the two Wars of Succession of Monferrato (1612–16 and 1628–31).27 In fact, Casale was an epicenter of hostilities involving Savoy, France, Spain, and the Gonzaga of Mantua for much of the seventeenth century.28 Its military citadel was one of most important in Europe and Arborio’s graffiti record its siege in 1628: ‘1628 del mese d Aprile D. Gonzalo di cordova governatore di mto assediò casale monferato’ (1628 in the month of April, Don Gonzalo di Cordova, governor of Monferrato, besieged Casale Monferrato) as well as its destruction: ‘1695 alli 12 lulio il Duca di Savoia à pigliato casale à forca [forza] darmi è la fa8o pianare tu8a la ci8adella daĳ francesi in una so …’ (On the 12th of July 1695, the Duke of Savoy took Casale by force and had the French raze the entire citadel in one …).

Not only is the location of the town relevant but also that of the building. As it turns out, at Arborio and elsewhere, the buildings that received graffiti occupy sites that are peripheral in relationship to the town and as a result are not parish churches: the Madonna di Campagna in Lenta, as it name indicates, is in the countryside by the village, and the Basilica di San Zeno Maggiore, although the oldest church in Verona, was outside the city walls (and is not the cathedral church, which, as could be expected, is more centrally located).

If in nearby Ghislarengo (3.5 kilometers north of Arborio) a Madonna painted at the end of the fi>eenth century or the beginning of the sixteenth century that received many inscriptions is not in a religious building, it nevertheless confirms the tendency observed here: the fresco is on the façade of a house on the outer edge of the town.29 The state of the painting – in particular because of its location out‑of‑doors – makes deciphering the inscriptions very difficult but some seem to relate to a local event – the making of the road (‘1556 die 6 di novembre fu fa8a la ro8a di ga8inara’), which makes sense in this location. However, many of the others record threats that came from outside, just as in Arborio, for instance plagues (‘1585 li 16 decembre … la peste nel Ivrea,’ ‘1576 die 10 maĳ fu magna pestis in Mediolano’), invasions (‘1553 di 18 novembris i francesi introrno in vercelli’), and storms (‘1555 Die 20 maĳ venit magna tempesta’).

The peripheral situation of these chapels suggests a protective function, the buildings becoming a symbolic shield of sorts. This is confirmed by the fact that, at least in the former Duchy of Savoy, all the chapels dedicated to St. Sebastian are located at the entrances to villages, on the main access road.30 In the case of Arborio, this was the Via Regia, leading from Milan to the Alpine valleys and on to France. As far as one can tell from the scarce surviving documents, the chapel was not used on a regular basis – other than on St. Sebastian’s day.

Studying the placement of the graffiti in relationship to the paintings is also revealing. Once again, the case of Arborio fits within a more general pa8ern. More o>en than not, inscriptions appear near or on the iconic depictions of saints rather than on more narrative painting cycles. At Arborio, it is clear that the Passion cycle was only chosen as a support because the inscribers had run out of space on the frescoes of the saints. Only the first three scenes



received inscriptions, with an overwhelming majority to be found on the first panel, Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem (28 entries). The following depiction, the Last Supper, has three entries, while the next two, Christ Washing the Feet of the Apostles and the Agony in the Garden each have one inscription. Furthermore, the inscriptions on the Passion cycle tend to be more recent ones.

The fact that the graffiti appear on the walls surrounding altars (that is, the apse wall and the side niche with a secondary altar) is not surprising: this is a feature that was observed by Nicole Thierry, one of the very few scholars to deal with the question of graffiti on frescoes. Thierry addressed the issue in her study of Cappadocian churches, which are rich in graffiti.31 Carola Jäggi made similar observations about the Tempie8o sul Clitunno near Spoleto, with over fi>y instances ranging from the seventh through the ninth century gathered by the altar.32 This feature leads Jäggi to draw a parallel with the practice of inscribing names on altar tables.33 I should note that we have here a bit of a chicken‑and‑egg situation: for narrative scenes are usually placed on the nave walls of a church, while more iconic depictions are gathered near the altar; I believe that what counts is not so much the location in relationship to the altar as the nature of the depiction.

At Arborio, saints such as Anthony (fig. 6.2) and Sebastian are the figures who receive not only the most inscriptions, but some of the earliest surviving ones.34 St. Anthony was invoked against ergotism (or St. Anthony’s fire, as it was then called) and other skin diseases as well as for veterinary cases, in particular for pigs (his a8ribute) and horses – certainly a useful saint in rural areas.35 His feast day (17 January) was the occasion for an important celebration in Arborio.36 A nineteenth‑century broadside printed in Vercelli37 indicates that he was also invocated against fires (fig. 6.10). Sebastian, to whom the chapel is dedicated, was particularly popular in the Duchy of Savoy, with many chapels decorated with cycles of his life, or dedicated to him.38 He owed his popularity to his protection against the plague, which, at that time and place, was endemic.39 His importance at Arborio is further expressed by the fact that he appears no less than three separate times: in the center of the apse among the Apostles (represented naked and pierced by arrows), a second time in the niche (as a knight holding a sword and three arrows, fig. 6.1), and also in the nave (with two men darting arrows at him). Although Sebastian ‘specialized’ in protection against the plague, Anthony as well was considered a saint antipesteux or pestheilig. On St. Anthony (fig. 6.3) an inscription records an outbreak of the disease in 157040 and, with a 7 added over the O, a second outbreak in 1577,41 while another graffito, placed on the depiction of the enthroned Virgin and Child (see fig. 6.1) recalls the 1630 epidemic.42 This last outbreak, o>en referred to as the ‘Manzonian plague’ because the nineteenth‑century author immortalized it in his novel I promesi sposi, was particularly devastating and raged for several years (1629–33).43 In nearby Casale Montferrato, for instance, thirty to fi>y people were dying each day during the summer of 1630.44 It should finally be noted that St. Roch, another saint whose protection was invoked against the plague,45 is also



present at San Sebastiano, although he bears only three inscriptions, all in a rather fragmentary state, dated 1665, 1737, and 1832. Louis Réau reminds us that the cult of this fourteenth‑century saint developed in the fi>eenth century and that he was canonized in the seventeenth. In addition to being invoked against the plague, St. Roch also protected animals.46

Arborio was most likely to be in a location prone to the plague, as the flea that carries it thrives in a warm and humid atmosphere (15–20 degrees

6.10 S. Antonio Abate, prote7ore

conto gl’incendi ele mala7ie del

bestiame (St. Anthony Abbot, protector against fires and ca8le illnesses), late 19th century, Vercelli: Tipografia Chiais, collection of author (photo: Maggie Libby)



centigrade, hence the summer outbreaks) – an atmosphere very much that of an area where the rice fields are flooded from April until August.47 That this terrain was particularly favorable to the disease is perhaps best illustrated by the way in which the inhabitants of Masserano, a locality some 20 kilometers northwest of Arborio in the foothills of the Alps, referred in dialect to the plague as ‘La mort d’Arbô.’48

I consider that simple a8acks, scratches made on a specific figure, are graffiti as well, for they similarly express something. In many paintings, both mural and on panel, we see figures that have been defaced. For instance, in Gio8o’s paintings at the Arena Chapel, we find several figures that received long scratches, meant to literally cross them off and cancel them. This treatment was given to devils in the Last Judgment and to some of the vices that were painted in grisaille on the dado.49 These marks do not represent or state anything in themselves, they are only meant to a8ack the depiction, but, as Dario Gamboni has shown, vandalism is not so simple a phenomenon.50 I believe that, instead of considering graffiti as vandalism, one should go the other way, and extend the notion of graffiti to any intervention on a wall, whether that intervention is verbal, or not, and whether it represents something, or not.

Someone piously wrote his name and a date on the foot of Christ,51 while in another instance from the same pictorial cycle, someone scratched the foot of a figure who torments Christ52 (figs 6.11 and 6.12). If one ‘writer’ expresses reverence, a desire to reach the holy figure and be acknowledged by him, the other, in a similar devotional gesture, manifests hatred for one

6.11 Pencil graffito on the feet of Christ, detail from Christ before Caiaphas, Notre‑Dame des Fontaines, La Brigue (photo: author)



of Caiaphas’s henchmen. What these examples show, is that, in the context of graffiti, and especially in that of graffiti made on paintings, the support is part of the message: the surface that receives the graffiti must be considered in order to fully understand its message. So indeed the ‘where?’ is a most essential question. What be8er illustration of this than a photograph the New York Times published on 7 July 2002 of a New York Fire Department truck on Ground Zero.53 The question ‘why?’ that was wri8en on the truck assumes its full meaning only when considered along with its support.

How?

The example above offers a good transition to my next question: how? Here the method of inscription is itself highly meaningful, as the le8ers were made by removing the dust and the ashes le> by the collapsing towers. Normally, one either incises a surface – this is the etymology of graffito, from graffiare, to scratch – or adds to it, as in contemporary graffiti. This is neither: for the graffito here reveals the surface below the layer le> by the disaster, thus exposing the layer of normalcy that has been obliterated. That at Arborio we have ‘real’ graffiti, carved into the pictorial layer, has major consequences for the practice’s meaning.

When considering the ‘how,’ a8ention must also be paid to the shape the graffito takes; for instance, in the case of a verbal graffito, what language is used or how cultivated is the writer’s hand? In so doing we also start addressing the question of ‘who’ was responsible for the inscriptions.

6.12 Graffito on a henchman’s foot, detail from the Flagellation of Christ, Notre‑Dame des Fontaines, La Brigue (photo: author)



When?

In the cases in which no date is indicated in the graffito, we can infer a general period, led by paleographic analysis conducted while asking ‘how?’ In some cases, asking ‘when?’ is linked to ‘by whom?’ and to ‘why?’ More o>en than not, answering this question is not so much assigning a specific date to the graffito as it is to name the occasion – a pilgrimage, a request for intercession, etc., in Arborio’s case; when the date is missing, the identification of an individual who is named in a graffito or signed it can help date the entry.

In most of Arborio’s inscriptions, the date is part of the inscriptions. The earliest surviving entry goes back to 1531 and the most recent to 1889.54 It is likely that this inscriptional practice may have started earlier: given the fact that earlier pictorial layers exist and that it is clear that the most recent frescoes were ‘refreshed’ by receiving coats of paint, it seems very difficult – if not outright impossible – to be able to affirm that the corpus did not begin before the 1531 entry. It should also be stressed that many inscriptions have been cancelled by scratching (see fig. 6.4). Furthermore, as I have already mentioned, the type of inscription we find at Arborio is not unique and many examples of similar records exist elsewhere that were made before Arborio’s earliest surviving dated inscription, thus suggesting an established tradition. This being said, it is interesting that the first surviving inscription coincides with the Council of Trent, that is, with a time of changing religious practices.

At the other end of the corpus the last inscription is dated 1889.55 The nineteenth century witnesses a neat decline in inscriptions, with a gap of 52 years between 1837 and 1889. Why did the practice stop then? The reason is mostly likely the building’s state of disrepair and subsequent condemnation, as is proven by documents in the parish archives: one dated 1883 and entitled ‘Proge8o di Restaura della Cappella di San Sebastiano’ (Project of Restoration of San Sebastiano’s Chapel) in which we read that the chapel was ‘rido8a in cosi miserime condizioni di conservazione da essere diventata non senza pericolo accessibile per lo stato della copertura’ (reduced to such miserable conditions to the point that its accessibility had become dangerous because of the state of the roof). The project was obviously not implemented, for on 1 February 1889 Celestino Fissore, archbishop of Vercelli, wrote ‘è interde8o l’Oratorio perchè è in pessimo stato’ (the oratory is condemned because it is in very bad state). It is not until 1891 that work was started and documents kept in the parish archives show that they dragged for several years: for instance in 1893 one concerns ‘Domanda e concessione di continuare la solita ufficiatura nel oratorio di S. Sebastiano dopo fa8e riparazioni’ (request and concession to continue the usual celebration of the office in the oratory of S. Sebastiano a>er completion of the repairs) while it is not until 1898 that a le8er from the sindaco (mayor) refers to deliberations concerning the building’s pavement. Interestingly, and despite their length, these repairs must not have been very sufficient (or lasting) for on a pastoral visit conducted on 15 January 1929 Don Giuseppe Zeno Prevosto records that the parish priest requested



funds from the Municipio ‘per ristorare il coperto del abside in cemento e protegere I dipinti’ (to restore the apse’s covering with cement and protect the paintings).

It is possible that even if the oratory was not being used for a while for its liturgical purposes, the inhabitants could still have sneaked inside to continue recording important events, although, as noted above, there had been already a distinct diminution in the practice. Perhaps then, we should keep in mind that the end of the nineteenth century corresponds with a time of increased Piedmontese out‑migration. Guido Ra8i notes that custom conflicts between France and Italy, blocking exports – in particular of rice and wine – ruined many small farmers who were forced to migrate to Europe and Latin America. In the years 1884–86 about a third of the 60,000 people leaving Italy came from Piedmont, and this figure was to increase even further a>er the crash of Turin banks.56

By Whom?

Perhaps a type of graffito that comes most readily to one’s mind is the simple signature le> by tourists and, indeed, this widespread type of inscription contains, and more o>en than not that is the only information provided – who was responsible for it. This is a practice that goes back in time and many famous instances are documented. There is the case of the Domus Aurea and the signatures le> by the Renaissance artists who visited it: Michelangelo, Raphael, Pinturicchio, Ghirlandaio, Martin van Heemskerck, Filippino Lippi along with later visitors, most notably Casanova and the Marquis de Sade.57 Other famous examples are Josquin des Prés’s in the cantoria in the Sistine Chapel58 and Byron’s in the castle of Chillon on the shore of Lake Geneva where Bonivard – the inspiration for the Prisoner of Chillon – was incarcerated. There is also the ‘autograph tree’ in Lady Augusta Gregory’s garden in Coole Park (Galway, Ireland), where her guests, now famous writers, le> initials (W.B. Yeats, Jack Yeats, George Russell, Douglas Hyde, Sean O’Casey, George Bernard Shaw). Location is key in understanding who was responsible for graffiti. And so inscriptions in places of confinement such as prison cells were le> by prisoners, as in the case just cited of Bonivard at Chillon – this is an important category of graffiti.59

But who was responsible for Arborio’s graffiti? Given the literacy rate, very few people would have been actually able to make the inscriptions. My recent research in Arborio’s archives indeed confirmed the limited literacy in this rural zone. In the period corresponding to that of San Sebastiano’s graffiti the number of Arboresi who could not sign their name60 or even of consiglieri (town councilmen) who could barely form the le8ers of their name remained extremely high.61 The use of Latin in the sixteenth and into the seventeenth century indicates that Arborio’s chroniclers, at this period anyway, were learned individuals. For the most part the inscriptions are anonymous, but



in some rare instances, we find signatures (in several cases it is difficult to ascertain, given the fragmentary condition of the inscription if the name is a signature or not). It is remarkable that among the 150 or so inscriptions of the corpus only five bear a signature (two of which are by the same individual). Three, dated 1661, 1677, and 1669 are signed by one Giacomo Gile8a (see fig. 6.4).62 In addition to these inscriptions, paleographic evidence shows that two more entries following the 1661 one, dated 1654 and 1664, are obviously by the same hand as the one signed ‘Gile8a.’ A few other names appear, some in more fragmentary inscriptions, but they are all of important families, men who were town counselors and mayors, or, in the case of the Gile8a, local nobility.63

If signatures are a rarity, a name that recurs with more frequency is that of the town, Arborio, or ‘Arboro,’ as it used to be called.64 I have recorded 18 instances of the name. The individual identity is obviously not so relevant here, and what the scriptors share is their relationship to the place, and indeed their ability to record its history. Even in the case of the French soldiers, who were not citizens, their inscription affirms nevertheless that – for a while at least – they were part of the community. In fact, the way the sentence is structured is highly revealing, for it is wri8en in the active voice, stating that ‘Arbero a loge 5 soldatz,’ literally that ‘Arborio lodged five soldiers.’

And Finally: Why?

This is of course the most complex of the questions. A first a8empt at addressing it comes from the sum of the previous questions and of their answers. Of all those questions, the one that is perhaps the most important in providing a key to the meaning of the act of leaving a mark such as graffiti is ‘where.’ There is no doubt that names le> in pilgrimage sanctuaries belong to pilgrims – in graffiti as in real estate, location is everything. In the case of the Trent graffito, for instance, once we take into consideration its location, the inscription that records the successful revolt of the Trentines against the prince bishop of Trent, George of Liechtenstein, assumes its full meaning, for it was placed in the bishop’s private apartments, right in the heart of his palace (the Palazzo dell’Aquila), thus manifesting the reappropriation of the power by the insurgent Trentines.

Luc Bucherie, who proposed a similar same set of questions to mine, insists on their interconnectedness.65 As a result, considering them together can o>en lead us closer to answering the ‘why?’ as is exemplified by Carola Jäggi’s cited work on early medieval graffiti on frescoes. It is by studying the location and by comparing it to other practices that some sense can be made. For instance, Jäggi reminds the reader how Giovanni Ba8ista De Rossi proposed that the names on the border below the depiction of St. Cecilia in the catacomb of St. Callixtus bore witness to those who were present at the translation of the saint’s relics to St. Cecilia in Trastevere in the early ninth century, but that later names



were those of pilgrims who came a>er the relics’ translation.66 Jäggi relates this to the practice of leaving inscriptions ‘on or near the saint’s tomb, as was usual in the early Christian period’ to request the saint’s intercession at the Last Judgment.67 So when considering the graffiti at the Tempie8o sul Clitunno on pictures close to the altar, Jäggi looks into the tradition of inscribing names on altars, which turns the table, in the phrase by Oexle mentioned above, into stone libri memoriales. Jäggi concludes: ‘Liturgical memoria certainly played a role with those graffiti commemorating third people, that is graffiti which were not autographs.’ Although at the Tempie8o sul Clitunno we cannot be sure of whether these are or not autographs, she brings evidence from Torba, Castelseprio, and Galliano, where graffiti clearly refer to the death of an individual.68 Focusing on St. Vincent in Galliano, she shows how one of these inscribers can be identified as Gariardus III, the nephew of Aribert of Intimiano, the archbishop of Milan who founded the church and who is depicted offering Christ a model of the church, under the protection of St. Adeodatus. Two more Gariardi are cited, most likely the founder’s father and brother. All these graffiti, along with an additional one (of one Petronius) are placed immediately below the depiction of Aribert. Jäggi concludes these ‘memorial graffiti were probably placed there so that the dead could directly share in the liturgical commemoration of the founder.’69

In the case of the graffiti studied by Nicole Thierry in Cappadocian churches, the content of the inscriptions, invocations to saints, combined with their placement, near the images of saints, leaves no doubt as to their function. Thierry stressed the formulaic nature of these inscriptions, most of which follow the pa8ern of ‘Lord, help your servant …’ and more seldom, they directly address the saint.70 She also notes instances of inscriptions that act more as a commentary on the images, as for instance next to a Crucified Christ: ‘I am the Good Shepherd’ and ‘Woe to those who abandoned the Lord,’ or, next to St. Andrew: ‘Venerable man, friend and dear to the Lord.’71 In the church of Hagios Stephanos, where the graffiti are limited to the image of Christ vanquishing evil (tramping over the lion and the serpent), the figure of Christ holds a verse from Ma8hew (11:28) – ‘Come to me, all you that labour, and are burdened’ – thus offering a real invitation to write on the image! Again, by comparing this to known practices, Thierry states ‘it is likely that the painting played the role of an icon with miraculous powers.’72

San Sebastiano’s Graffiti: History, Ritual, and Devotion

The analysis of Arborio’s corpus reveals the precision with which the location was chosen, its chronological span indicates that the practice was accepted or at least tolerated by the authorities, while the low level of literacy suggests that the individuals involved in the practice belonged to the town’s elite. Remarkable as well is the constant nature of the inscriptions’ content and the fact that they focus on occurrences of communal interest, thus fi8ing



the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of history, that of a ‘continuous methodical record … of public events.’73 The inscriptions’ structure remains constant as well: all the entries are wri8en about Arborio, they are in the third person and in the past tense. Not surprisingly so, since, according to Michel de Certeau, ‘history is a discourse in the third person.’74 Certeau also tells us that writing an event in the past tense constitutes a discourse of separation between past and present. By being inscribed on the walls of Arborio’s chapel, events were removed from the present, and forever set into the past. The impetus for doing so was for Arborio’s inhabitants to accomplish a severance from these events, saying in effect, ‘it’s all over now.’ Arborio’s writing of history was meant to digest each event, to objectify it, and this by detaching it from the passing of time and inscribing it on the chapel’s walls. Certeau showed that such distancing is what allows the present to become autonomous – a critical issue for Arborio, as the town struggled to remain autonomous despite invasions and other threats. One may think that Arborio’s inhabitants were spectators rather than actors in history,75 but as the events were wri8en on San Sebastiano’s walls, they, in fact, became part of their history.76 Furthermore, the act of writing introduced an active element into an otherwise passive experience. In this sense, Arborio conforms to Victor Turner’s definition of ritual, that of an active process able to introduce change.77

As Clyde Kluckhon put it, ritual gives ‘people something to do’78 and in more than one way, Arborio’s graffiti can be seen as the result of a ritual. This is an approach I have developed in an essay published in 2002.79 Therefore, I will limit myself to a very quick overview of the kind of ideas I explored in that essay. The types of event Arborio’s graffiti record, for instance, are truly the kind that generate what early in the twentieth century anthropologist Arnold van Gennep called ‘rites of passage.’80 Such rituals, which occur at times of change and transition, are composed of a succession of three stages: a preliminary one, characterized by rites of separation; a transitional one in which the subject is suspended in a liminal state; and finally a postliminary stage in which rites of aggregation or incorporation take place. The notion of liminality was later developed and popularized by Victor Turner, who focused on the central stage of van Gennep’s rites of passage. It is striking that what Turner wrote about liminal phenomena can be applied word for word to Arborio’s case:

Liminal phenomena tend to be collective, concerned with calendrical, meteorological, biological, or socio‑structural cycles and rhythms, or with crises in social processes whether these result from internal adjustments, external adaptations, or unexpected disasters (earthquakes, invasions, plagues, and the like). Thus they appear at what may perhaps be called ‘natural breaks’ in the flow of natural or sociocultural processes.81

The inscriptions tell the story of a community whose integrity was regularly threatened by foreign armies, the unpredictable floods of the Sesia,



meteorological disasters, and epidemics. Thus, they can be seen as the marks le> by a ritual aimed at imposing structure and meaning to these disruptive events – an o>en‑acknowledged function of ritual. The gathering of both positive and negative events on Arborio’s walls functions as does ritual: fighting human insecurity by establishing continuity between past, present, and future. This a8empt to ‘make the future predictable by making it conform to the past’82 is exemplified at Arborio by the standardization of the inscriptions and by their repetitive nature.

Arborio’s graffiti obviously do not constitute a history book, nor is their relationship to the recorded events intellectual or analytical. In fact, as a ritual, they aim at symbolic manipulation. What we have here is rather what Pierre Nora termed a ‘lieu de mémoire,’83 a place born out of the desire to crystallize memory. The need to create and maintain places of memory – all manner of archives and celebrations – is the result of the awareness that there is no such thing as spontaneous memory. The choice of a place of worship and, more specifically, of the effigies of holy figures as the site for this recording make sense for, as Nora so well expressed it, ‘la mémoire installe le souvenir dans le sacré’ (memory situates remembrance in a sacred context).84

In fact, because these inscriptions are placed in a church on the bodies of holy figures, I have considered them the result of a devotional act85 – belonging to a ritual of a devotional nature. While private piety aims at achieving Christian perfection, it also aims at an interaction, and even a contact, between the devout and the divine. This is why in the art created for devotional practices, the issue of using it, of interacting with it, is crucial.86 Leaving one’s mark in (or rather, on) a holy place was a widespread practice – and of course still is: in shrines in Italy and elsewhere, despite the repeated signs forbidding it, pilgrims continue to leave their marks on the walls.87 Inscriptions other than one’s name made on a religious support are also common. Consider the practice of writing prayers on books kept in shrines, or even of prayers wri8en directly on devotional objects.88 All these cases belong to what Joseph‑Claude Poulin terms the ‘marginal uses of writing,’ phenomena between religion and magic in which a text is endowed with a function additional to its primary one of recording or transmi8ing information.89 Poulin gives examples, drawn from Western Europe in the early medieval period (from the fi>h through the tenth centuries), which involve le8ers exchanged with the other world (God and saints writing to humans and vice versa), holy texts consulted in a random fashion as a means of divination, and inscriptions produced in hopes of prompting miracles. This last category is of special interest here, in particular the two examples Poulin cites in which two saints wrote le8ers to rivers, directing them not to overflow over a certain limit. Fourth‑century St. Sabinus had a notary copy his message for the Po, while in the next century St. Severinus addressed the Danube through an engraved inscription.90 Similarly, the graffiti at San Sebastiano could be seen as an a8empt to communicate with the elements



through the mediation of the saints whose bodies provide the support for the text. But writ can also miraculously protect, as Poulin shows, and this too could represent another of the ‘marginal uses’ of Arborio’s chronicle. A>er all, a large number of the inscriptions refer to invasions, be they by armies or by natural elements. In this regard it is interesting to note the recurrence of the phrase ‘è venuto’ or ‘è venuta’ (came) for disastrous meteorological events, epidemics, shortages, etc. The chapel, which was built at the entrance of the town, on one of the main roads, thus acted as a ‘spiritual wall.’91

Arborio’s graffiti bear witness to a physical interaction between the devout and the holy image and this interaction does not stop at the surface of the images, for here we have ‘real’ graffiti, in the etymological sense of the term. Although at first incising may appear as a cheaper and easier technique, one that does not require any material for writing, ink or paint, only a sharp instrument, it is a fully meaningful choice. Rather than a superficial contact, as would be the case with marks made on the paintings, incising reaches deep into the saint’s pictorial flesh. I have compared the principle of an inscription penetrating the body to St. Francis, whose body became the support for the text of his imitation of Christ.92 At Arborio human events were inscribed on the saints’ holy bodies, while on the human body of St. Francis, Christ transposed the wounds of his Passion. One could say that when he received the stigmata, Francis’s body mirrored that of Christ, through the addition of the same marks (the wounds). As I suggested, one could see in Francis’s stigmatized body a text, one which expresses the perfection of his imitation of Christ. To pursue this metaphor, I would say that the most accurate writing support to compare with Francis’s body would be that of a wax tablet, for the wounds are incised and this seems to me quite pertinent for it calls to mind a traditional metaphor for memory. Indeed, Francis’s body was the result of his memorization of Christ’s Passion: it is because the poverello had rehearsed enough in his mind the story of Christ’s Passion that he received the stigmata – a monument to his perfection. But these miraculous marks were also meant to perpetuate the memory of Christ’s Passion. For St. Francis, as for Arborio’s saints, the body became the writing support and that writing was done by incising. The carved inscriptions thus become one with the saint’s body – in French, very revealingly, one would say: elles font corps avec. I should add here that in order to further think about this aspect of Arborio’s graffiti the kind of theorization that in recent years has been done on ta8ooing has been most helpful, and especially relevant, since, just like graffiti, ta8ooing is a practice that traditionally was considered the reprehensible product of an underworld that is be8er le> ignored.93 Furthermore, both are characterized by their ambiguous and ambivalent nature, as they combine reverence and aggression.94 One is of course reminded of Michel Foucault’s famous declaration that ‘the body is the inscribed surface of events,’95 in which history is the writing instrument. By writing on the walls of San Sebastiano, Arborio’s inhabitants, as other graffitists who similarly



recorded important events elsewhere, transformed individual memories into history. Placed in the communal space of the chapel, they embody Maurice Halbwachs’s conviction that memories are shaped by what he called ‘les cadres sociaux.’96 It is through commemoration that collective memory receives an anchor. Commemoration needs a place – we are back to Nora’s lieux de mémoire.

Memory and Commemoration

In our post‑9/11 world, at the time of writing, New York is dealing with the question of how this event should be physically commemorated in its site, of what kind of memorial should be built: the issue of the spatial dimension of the commemorative act is acquiring a special resonance. I should add that I am not distinguishing between memorial and monument, for it is a thorny issue, about which there is no real consensus. Arthur Danto stated, ‘We erect monuments so that we shall always remember, and build memorials so that we shall never forget,’97 and according to such a distinction, monuments are essentially celebratory, while memorials embody grief. In Arborio’s case it is difficult to decide: maybe it is at the same time a monument and a memorial, as it records and thus commemorates events both positive and negative. Furthermore, if the negative entries point to a situation closer to that of a memorial, it could be argued that their recording transforms them as they become witnesses of the town’s resilience.

The Vietnam Memorial is a famous recent example of such a monument, perceptively studied by Marita Sturken in her 1991 article.98 Not only does Sturken address how such a monument – here I use the term in its more general sense – can help bring closure to a painful chapter in American history, but she also considers how it has, to quote her, ‘taken on all the trappings of a religious shrine.’ What Sturken describes is the interaction that takes place between the visitors and the site. I am not sure the distinction she makes is really pertinent, for if physical interaction is fundamental in devotional practices, interaction is also an essential component of monuments. One only needs to think about how we visit monuments, how we read their inscriptions, and depose wreaths during ceremonies. Thus, it seems to me that the Vietnam Memorial is just an extreme case, that of a highly successful monument that deeply resonates in its audience. Marianne Doezema is certainly correct when she affirms that ‘the success of a public monument is measured by its ability to communicate, to elicit a response.’99 Similarly, James Young believes that ‘simple stones in the landscape, monuments don’t possess much value in themselves,’ and that they only assume their meaning when they are used, when people come to interact with them.100 For Young, ‘visitors are an integral part of the commemorative text.’101



Exposed Writings/Action Writings

If Arborio’s rich corpus, with its abundance of entries, readily suggests that the chapel was transformed into a repository for documents of sorts, I do believe that it is closer to a monument than it is to an archive (I am taking the term in its common sense, not its Foucaldian one). It is important to keep in mind that the inscriptions are, to borrow Armando Petrucci’s term, ‘exposed writings.’102 They are not filed away (as in an archive), they are meant to be seen – visibility is essential for exposed writings.

The act of writing on the chapel’s walls introduced an active element into an otherwise passive experience, for indeed most of the entries refer to events related to the subsistence of the townspeople, who could not control the majority of those events. Béatrice Fraenkel believes that ‘exposed writings’ are essentially ‘action writings’ (‘des écrits d’action’).103 For Fraenkel such writings can fulfill a wide range of functions: they may be meant to act upon the others, upon oneself, or aim at informing, at commemorating, or at honoring. Fraenkel recently considered in a book‑long study the flurry of exposed writings that appeared in Manha8an following 9/11.104 She noted that this particular instance of scriptural activity provided comfort and expressed mourning, while it also responded to the destruction the city suffered by constituting a new public space.105 In that sense, they are not so different from Arborio’s inscriptions as in both cases writing becomes a collective civic work.106 Regardless of the exact content of an exposed writing – whether to chronicle Arborio’s history, or to record one’s presence at a pilgrimage site, or even to a8ack an evil figure – it is the act that remains the most essential element, the motivation to leave a mark, be it textual or not.

In an article for a collection on The Cultural Processes of ‘Appropriation’,107 I noted that at Arborio such processes were at work in more than one way and at more than one level. A building – the chapel – was appropriated, and more specifically, its walls, and these were not used indiscriminately, for almost exclusively iconic depictions received inscriptions. As I suggested, this feature expressed the community’s desire to establish a contact with the depicted saints in an effort informed by devotional practices – or indeed, through the appropriation of such practices. Arborio’s inhabitants continued this ritually structured endeavor for at least four centuries. Inscribing the events allowed the o>‑threatened community to appropriate history, affirming that these events, even if endangering the town’s survival, were constitutive of Arborio’s identity: Arborio had a long and documented history.108 As a ritualized act, Arborio’s writing of history reinterpreted reality109 but in order to do so, had to reinterpret a religious building and the images it used as support – or, to borrow the term used by Virginia Raguin in her introduction to this volume, had to reconfigure their meaning.



Notes

1 Luc Weibel, ‘Postface,’ in Madeleine Lamouille: Pipes de terre et pipes de porcelaine. Souvenirs d’une femme de chambre en Suisse romande, 1920–1940, ed. Luc Weibel (Geneva: Editions Zoé, 1978), 155. Unless otherwise noted, all translation are mine.

2 The reader will no doubt recognize the town’s name, which was given to a variety of rice developed in 1936 by Domenico Marchese.

3 It consists of a simple rectangular space, measuring roughly 18 meters in length by 7 meters across; in addition to the apse on the eastern side, there is a smaller apse on the eastern end of the south wall. Scholars have suggested that this smaller apse might have been that of an earlier church, oriented north–south, and that in the fi>eenth century the current nave was built, shi>ing the axis to east–west. This earlier building would go back to the thirteenth century.

4 The Passion cycle occupies the south and north walls, as well as the western wall (above the opening that connects the nave with the narthex). For further information as well as a consideration of Arborio’s Passion cycle in the context of the cycles produced in the Duchy of Savoy, see my Le Christ peint. Le cycle de la Passion dans les chapelles peintes du XVe siècle dans les Etats de Savoie (Chambéry: Société Savoisienne d’Histoire et d’Archéologie, 2004), passim. In the apse we find a Christ Pantocrator (with the symbols of the Evangelists) and a series of Apostles. A depiction of the Annunciation occupies the top of the triumphal arch, with saints on each side (a female on the le> – too damaged to be identified, and St. Bernardine of Siena on the right). In the upper part of the small apse on the south wall (fig. 6.1) is a Crucifixion, limited to Christ on the cross flanked by the Virgin Mary and St. John in front of a crenellated wall. On the wall below appears a series of saints and an Enthroned Virgin and Child with a donor. Above the apse, on what forms a triumphal arch, one finds a depiction of the Vision of St. Eustache (a deer with a crucifix between its antlers) and St. Agatha’s Martyrdom (having her breasts cut off). On the south wall of the nave, below the Passion cycle appear a more saints and a depiction of St. Sebastian between two men shooting arrows at him. On the north wall, below the Passion cycles is a depiction of the Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew; it was painted at a much later date, probably in the eighteenth century. Finally, the decoration on the nave walls is completed by a frieze with busts of Old Testament figures. Several hands and several pictorial layers can be seen. The paintings in the apse, the small apse and the eight first scenes of the Passion cycle were considered by Franco Mazzini to have been painted around 1450, possibly by a painter from Novara along with assistants. In the last decade of the fi>eenth century Tommaso Cagnola painted the saints below the Passion cycle on the south wall, while his workshop completed (around 1500) the second half of the Passion cycle. See Franco Mazzini and Giovanni Romano, Opere d’arte a Vercelli e nella sua provincia. Recuperi e restauri 1968–76. Catalogo della mostra (Vercelli: Civico Museo Francesco Borgogna, 1976), 105–6. Paola Astrua calls the artist responsible for the first part of the cycle the ‘Pi8ore della Passione di Arborio’ and assigns to him other paintings in the area and compares the paintings from the small apse to works from a workshop from Biella, among which is the fresco of the ‘Cristo della Domenica’ in Biella’s cathedral. Paola Astrua, ‘Due note documentarie sur Daniele De Bosis ed alcuni aspe8i del tardo Qua8rocento nel vercellese,’ in Ricerche sulla pi7ura del Qua7rocento in Piemonte, ed. Giovanni Romano (Turin: Soprintendenza per i Beni Artistici e Storici del Piemonte, 1985), 166–8.



5 My thanks to Viviana Castelli for help with this entry. Dr. Castelli explains that ‘terra refers to an urban se8lement larger and administratively more important than a castello (urban se8lement encircled by walls) or a villa (no surrounding walls) but less important and generally smaller than a “ci7à” (which had walls and was an episcopal see).’ E‑mail 22 August 2007.

6 Samuel Butler, Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino (London: Jonathan Cape, 1913), 234; see also Dario Gamboni, ‘“Fossiles d’âme”: L’usure du temps et ses usages,’ in L’usure du temps: la restauration des objets du Patrimoine (Saint‑Romain‑en‑Gal, Vienne: Musée et sites archéologiques de Saint‑Romain‑en‑Gal, Vienne, 1997), 16.

7 Butler, Alps and Sanctuaries, 234–5.

8 As Alphonse Dupront so well put it: ‘Ecrire son nom en un endroit du “lieu” sacré demeure présence, et présence qui dure plus que la brièveté d’une vie, “à jamais.”’ (To write one’s name somewhere in a sacred place leaves a presence, one that outlasts the brevity of a life, indeed forever.) Alphonse Dupront, ‘Pèlerinages et lieux sacrés,’ in Du Sacré. Croisades et pèlerinages. Images et langages (Paris: Gallimard, 1987), 403.

9 Detlev Kraack and Peter Lingens, Bibliographie zu historischen Graffiti zwischen Antike und Moderne, Medium Aevum Quotidianum Sonderband XI (Krems: Medium Aevum Quotidianum, 2001).

10 For instance, Serge Ramond and Marcel Martin, two Frenchmen who opened museums dedicated to graffiti. In his Musée des graffiti anciens in the southwestern town of Marsilly, Martin displays 170 casts (but says that he has 500 more but lacks space: Marie‑Eve Constans, ‘Les Graffiti conteurs d’histoires,’ Sud Ouest, 2 August 2002, <h8p://www.sudouest.com/020802/reg_chmaritime.asp?Article=020802a59572.xml>): this is a figure that pales in comparison to the 3,500 casts Ramond has gathered in his Musée de la Mémoire des Murs et d’Archéologie in Verneuil‑en‑Hala8e in the outskirts of Paris. The museum’s website boasts that the collections are ‘fruit de plus de 30 ans de recherche dans le domaine du graffito’ (<h8p://perso.wanadoo.fr/memoiremurs/index.html>). There is also Axel Thiel from Kassel, Germany, who established an archive in which he assembled 100,000 documents and has made available on line a bibliography of 33,000 entries, product of ‘30 years of voluntary work’ (<h8p://people.freenet.de/graffitiforschung.de>). People working on the subject seem to be fascinated with numbers – perhaps the sign of a true collecting obsession?

11 Luc Bucherie, ‘Mise en scène des pouvoirs dans les graffiti anciens (XV–XVIIIe siècles),’ Gaze7e des Beaux‑Arts CIII/126 (1984), 3. ‘La constitution du corpus obéit à des sources dont la fiabilité n’est pas absolue.’

12 These questions correspond to those I posed with my colleague Béatrice Fraenkel when we organized a session on ‘Graffiti Revisited’ at the Sixth International Conference on Word and Image Studies that took place in 2002 in Hamburg, Germany.

13 Susan A. Phillips, ‘Graffiti,’ The Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner (New York: Macmillan, Grove 1996), vol. 13, 269–71.

14 San Bernardo’s remote location outside the village and changing pa8erns of local worship contributed to its neglect over the subsequent centuries. Early writings have consistently stressed the poor condition of the building and, consequently, of the paintings. Further damage occurred during invasions of this ‘terra di confine’; and, as early as the eighteenth century, the paintings already needed



to be restored. Bruno Ciliento, an official of the Ligurian historical monuments, has recounted in vivid detail the vicissitudes of the paintings – which were successively restored no less than four times between 1935 and 1982 – and their peripatetic adventures a>er they were detached in 1955. Bruno Ciliento, ‘Gli affreschi di Giovanni Canavesio a San Bernardo di Pigna: un problema di conservazione,’ A7i del congresso ‘I Liguri dell’Arno all’Ebro’, Albenga 1982, Rivista di Studi Liguri 51, 1–4 (1985), 17–24. Since Ciliento’s article, a sixth restoration has taken place, recounted by Franco Boggero, ‘Il restauro degli affreschi,’ in Canavesio in San Bernardo a Pigna: Il restauro della chiesa e degli affreschi, ed. Franco Boggero and Paola Marelli (Genoa: Ministero per i Beni Culturali e Ambientali, etc., 1998), 23–7.

15 Ricardo Quaglia, ‘Affreschi e diari murali nel Vercellese: S. Maria dei Campi a Lenta tra Arborio e Ghislarengo,’ Bolle7ino storico Vercellese XXXVI.2 (2007), 37–8. I thank Professor Quaglia for sharing his article with me.

16 Monsignor Giuseppe Ferraris, ‘La pieve di S. Stefano di Lenta nel contesto delle Pievi eusebiane,’ in Arte e storia di Lenta. A7i del convegno di Studi (aprile 1981), ed. Maurizio Casse8i (Vercelli: Archivio di Stato, Vercelli/Comune di Lenta 1986), 134 n. 201; Franco Ferre8i, ‘Lenta, Santa Maria dei Campi. Una chiesa protoromanica,’ in Casse8i, Arte e storia, 341–64; and most recently Quaglia, ‘Affreschi e diari murali.’

17 I wonder if Virginia Raguin, in her introduction to this volume, does not explain this when she states: ‘an object cannot represent a specific religion and at the same time speak the language of art disengaged from the particularities of use.’

18 There are in fact quite a few graffiti at the Arena Chapel. For reproductions see Giuseppe Basile, Gio7o, The Arena Chapel Frescoes (London: Thames & Hudson, 1993), 286–7, 322–7, 345, 347–9, and 359.

19 Martin Blindheim, Graffiti in Norwegian Stave Churches, c. 1150–c. 1350 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1985); and V. Pritchard, English Medieval Graffiti (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967).

20 For a recent theory‑informed approach, see Juliet Fleming, ‘Graffiti, Grammatology, and the Age of Shakespeare,’ in Renaissance Culture and the Everyday, ed. Patricia Fumerton and Simon Hunt (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), repr. in Juliet Fleming, Graffiti and the Writing Arts of Early Modern Europe (London: Reaktion, 2001); and Andrew Gordon, ‘The Act of Libel: Conscripting Civic Space in Early Modern England,’ The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 32.2 (2002), 375–97.

21 Omar Bore8az, I Grafi7i nel castello di Issogne in Valle d’Aosta (Ivrea: Priuli & Verlucca, 1995), 5. Juliet Fleming argued in Graffiti and the Writing Arts that paper was scarce at that time and that writing on other surfaces – walls and pots, for example – was much more common than we assume.

22 Enrico Castelnuovo, I mesi di Trento (Trento: Temi, 1990), 10. George of Liechtenstein was elected to the see by the Trentine chapter in 1390 and took office the following year. The Trentines resented both the new bishop’s heavier taxes and the presence of foreigners in the government (George, who came from Moravia, had brought some of his compatriots along). The insurgent Trentines won, thanks to the intervention of count Frederick IV of Habsburg who captured the bishop and stripped him of his secular power.

23 The comet is mentioned no less than three times in three different locations: on St. Sebastian in the small apse (‘1744 e venuta la stella di mercurio con una scoa



di foco nel mese di feb’: 1744 the mercury star with a fire tail came in the month of February), on St. Benedict also in the small apse (‘1744 il mese di Febraro è venuta la stella con il raggio di focho largo un brazo’: 1744 on the month of February came the star with the fire ray long of a brazo), and on the Entry into Jerusalem on the south wall (‘1744 fe di anno venuta una stela …’: 1744 February of that year came a star …).

24 ‘D’azzurro al decusse ancorato, d’argento, accantonato da qua8ro giglio d’oro’ (Azure, a saltire argent, between four fleurs‑de‑lys or), Blasonario Subalpino (<h8p://xoomer.alice.it/blasonpiemon/Pagina1.html>).

25 ‘Fasciato d’oro e di rosso di dieci pezzi’ (Barry of ten or and gules), idem.

26 In 1404 the nobiles de Arborio submi8ed to the authority of Amadeus VIII of Savoy. Along with them came a territory of about 50 square kilometers extending on both sides of the river Sesia. The area remained under Savoyard domination until Napoleon’s victory at Marengo in 1802, when Piedmont was annexed to France; at the treaty of Vienna it was restituted to Victor Emmanuel I and a>er the unification it became Italian.

27 A>er the peace of Cateau‑Cambrésis in 1559 (which put an end to the Italian Wars) the Monferrato became part of the lands of the Gonzaga. The first War of Succession followed the death of Vincenzo II Gonzaga.

28 Guido Ra8i, ‘Histoire du Piémont,’ L’histoire en Savoie 29, 115 (1994), 23.

29 Monsignor Giuseppe Ferraris, ‘La S. Sindone salvata a Vercelli,’ A7i del primo convegno regionale del Centro Internazionale di Sindonologia. Vercelli, 9 aprile 1960, ed. Reale Confraternita deln SS. Sudario (Turin: Quaderni ‘Sindon,’ 1960), 21 and 42, n. 40; and ‘La pieve di S. Stefano di Lenta,’ 134, n. 201; Quaglia, ‘Affreschi e diari murali,’ 40–43.

30 See, for instance, Paul Canestrier, ‘Les Chapelles rurales et les Saints populaires du Comté de Nice,’ Nice Historique, January–March 1946, 11, who, noting the flowering of chapels dedicated to saints invoked against the plague, adds that these were usually built at the entrance to the village, on the side of the road from where the disease would arrive.

31 Nicole Thierry, ‘Remarques sur la pratique de la foi d’après les peintures des églises de Capadoce,’ in Artistes, artisans et production artistique au moyen âge: Colloque international, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Université

de Rennes II, Haute‑Bretagne, 2–6 mai 1983, ed. X. Barral I Altet (Paris: Picard, 1986–90), vol. 3 (1990), 437–59. See in particular 440–441: ‘C’est donc l’image conceptuelle de l’incarnation et, en second lieu, les portraits de saints qui entraînèrent la ferveur locale, non le récit christologique.’

32 ‘Graffiti as a Medium for Memoria in the Early and High Middle Ages,’ Memory and Oblivion. Proceedings of the XXIX th International Congress of the History of Art held in Amsterdam, 1–7 September 1996, ed. Wessel Reinink and Jeroen Stumpel (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1999), 745–51.

33 She refers to O8o Gerhard Oexle, ‘Memoria und Memorialüberlieferung im Mi8elater,’ Frühmi7elalterliche Studien 10 (1976), 74, and to ‘Die Gegenwart der Lebenden und der Toten. Gedanken über Memoria,’ in Gedächtnis, das Gemeinschac sticet (Munich and Zurich: Schnell & Steiner, 1985), 82. Oexle called this practice ‘libri memoriales in stone.’

34 Fi>een entries for St. Anthony (with three from the sixteenth century), twelve entries on the St. Sebastian on the small apse (one of which is from the sixteenth



century), and seven more entries on the representation of his martyrdom on the nave wall. The depiction of Sebastian in the main apse is too damaged to distinguish any inscription.

35 Philippe Walter, ed., Saint Antoine entre mythe et légende (Grenoble: Ellug, 1996), 7, refers to St. Anthony as the ‘indispensable médiateur du monde paysan.’ See Louis Réau, Iconographie de l’art Chrétien, 3 vols (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1955–59), III:1, 103–4, for list of diseases.

36 Debora Bazzano, ‘Schedde di vita arboriese,’ in Riccardo Quaglia, Debora Bazzano, and Walter Camurati, Arborio: Storia, arte, fede, economia, tradizioni (Arborio: Comune di Arborio and Vercelli: Provincia di Vercelli, 2004), 147.

37 About 20 kilometers south of Arborio and head of the bishopric.

38 See Marguerite Roques, Les peintures murales du sud‑est de la France (Paris: Picard, 1961), 58–60, for the frequency in southeastern France of St. Sebastian chapels and pictorial cycles of his life. Quaglia, in Quaglia et al., Arborio, 237, n. 278, lists chapels from the area either dedicated to him or bearing depictions of the saint. On the ubiquity of representations of the saint, see Jean Delumeau, La Peur en Occident, XIVe–XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Fayard, 1978), 107: ‘dans l’univers catholique jusqu’au XVIIIe siècle inclus, il n’y eut guère d’église rurale ou urbaine sans une représentation de saint Sébastien criblé de flèches.’

39 Nicolas Greslou, La Peste en Savoie, Mémoires et Documents, 85 (Chambéry: Société Savoisienne d’Histoire et d’Archéologie, 1973), 15–16, lists 22 outbursts of plague in the city of Chambéry alone during the fi>eenth century.

40 See, for instance, for plague in the Beaufortain in 1570, Jean‑Paul Bergeri, ‘Les épidémies en Savoie,’ L’Histoire en Savoie 22:89 (1988), 7.

41 The 1577 plague is the so‑called ‘Borromean plague’ that hit Milan in 1575–78, named a>er the archbishop of Milan who lived between 1538 and 1589 and was canonized in 1610. See Christine M. Boeckl, Images of Plague and Pestilence. Iconography and Iconology (Kirksville MO: Truman State University Press, 2000), 58–9.

42 ‘1630 a 12 Marci incepit Mortalitas de Malicarboni ut contagiato [contagioso?] In loco Arboro et mensis et … tre menses et loca Lombardi’ (1630 on 12 March begun the bubonic plague in the locality of Arborio and months and … three months in Lombard localities). For the period during which these outbreaks recorded at Arborio took place, see William Naphy and Andrew Spicer, The Black Death: A History of Plagues, 1345–1730 (Stroud: Tempus, 2001), Chapter 4, ‘The Circle of Death. Endemic Plague, 1500–1700,’ 81–102.

43 Carlo M. Cipolla, Fighting the Plague in Seventeenth‑Century Italy (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981) 100, provides figures for the percentage of the population that died in Italian cities. Particularly relevant here are those for Milan (46 per cent), Como (42 per cent) and Carmagnola (25 per cent). In Cipolla’s rates, the highest figure is in Verona, with a staggering 61 per cent. Delumeau, Le Peur en Occident, 101, gives an even higher percentage for Mantova, with 77 per cent. On the plague in the Novarese, see Giuseppe Balosso and Alfredo Papale, Momo, contributi per la storia di una località chiave del medio novarese (Momo: Comitato Festeggiamenti Santi Zeno e Tecla, 1985), 351: the nearby town of Momo, for instance, had 721 inhabitants in 1629 and by the end of 1631 had lost half of its population.

44 Ra8i, ‘Histoire du Piémont,’ 24.



45 Boeckl, Images of Plague and Pestilence, 57–8.

46 Réau, Iconographie de l’art Chrétien, III:3, 1157, recounts this tradition, although without specifying when or where it was practised: on his feast day (16 August), the priest blessed herbs that were then mixed to the animals feed to protect them against contagious diseases. The saint also protected vineyards.

47 Thanks to Paolo Tagliabue for the information. The cultivation of rice was established in the Vercellese from the late fi>eenth century, where the Po valley offered perfect conditions, with abundant rain and a marshy terrain. See Bazzano in Quaglia et al., Arborio, 98.

48 Grazia Achino et al., Masserano. Guida a luoghi, monumenti e cose da scoprire (Masserano: Amici di Masserano, 1996), 29, n. 1, who adds that the 1630 plague saw the mona7i (the removers of corpses during plague) flock from Arborio and Landiona. Because of the frequency of epidemics, the community instituted free medical services in 1583, and the oratory of S. Rocco was used as a lazzare7o until the beginning of the twentieth century.

49 Basile, Gio7o, 286, 336, 337, 345, 347, 351, 353, and 359.

50 Dario Gamboni, Un iconoclasme moderne. Théorie et pratiques contemporaines du vandalisme artistique (Zurich: Institut suisse pour l’étude de l’art; Lausanne: Les éditions d’en‑bas, 1983), 57–9; and The Destruction of Art: Iconoclasm and Vandalism since the French Revolution (London: Reaktion, 1997), 327–9, which deal more specifically with graffiti.

51 Made in pencil, the name is illegible; the date reads ‘20 Septembre 1900.’

52 For reproductions of the scenes from which these details are taken, see my Painter and Priest: Giovanni Canavesio’s Visual Rhetoric and the Passion Cycle at La Brigue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), pls 8 and 9.

53 It was published with the following caption: ‘The demolished truck of Ladder Company 101 a>er the two towers collapsed. Someone has scrawled a question on the ash.’

54 Not until 2005 did I notice the 1960 date that appears on the depiction of St. James the Greater in the apse. I do consider it as the terminus of the corpus because of the gap of 71 years that separates it from the previous entry and the fact that it is not part of a fuller inscription, thus not in keeping with the type of graffiti that form the Arborio corpus.

55 For this date as the real end of the corpus, rather than the 1960 date, see previous note.

56 Ra8i, ‘Histoire du Piémont,’ 44.

57 Nicole Dacos, ‘Graffiti de la Domus Aurea,’ Bulletin Belgisch Historisch Instituut/Bulletin de l’Institut Historique 38 (1967), 145–76.

58 Reproduced in Francesco Buranelli and Allen Duston, eds, The Ficeenth‑Century Frescoes in the Sistine Chapel. Recent Restorations of the Vatican Museums, vol. IV (Vatican City State: Edizioni Musei Vaticani, 2003), fig. 106.

59 The museum at Verneuil‑en‑Hala8e has organized several exhibitions on the theme: ‘Trace et mémoire des cachots’ (1995), ‘Mémoire des cachots du 19e et 20e s.’ (1997, in Loches), and ‘Un bagne au Donjon de Clermont’ (1997). A famous example is in Domme’s bastide, where Templars were incarcerated and le> marks. The Verneuil museum also displays medieval graffiti from the prisons



in Sens and in the castle of Selles in Cambrai as well as later instances: from the nineteenth and twentieth century in the Tour de la Lanterne in La Rochelle and, from the time of German occupation during World War Two, of prisoners of the Gestapo in Paris. See Bucherie, ‘Mise en scène des pouvoirs,’ 4–5, for the cases of Domme, Loches, and Cambrai.

60 See, for instance, documents in the Archivio di Stato, Vercelli (herea>er abbreviated ASV), Arborio. Document ASV, Arborio, 16:5 (30 May 1764: heads of households agreeing to the building of a sacristy and the completion of the choir of S. Martino) shows that out of the 139 signatures, 59 are crosses (42.44 per cent). See also ASV, Arborio, 16:3 (11 and 22 July 1769, also concerning the work on S. Martino): the first bears 40 signatures of which 21 are crosses (52.5 per cent); the second 96 signatures of which 43 are crosses (44.79 per cent), thus suggesting an average of 46.67 per cent of illiterate citizens.

61 Or who could not even sign, as in the case of a Bernardino Rosso: see ASV, Arborio, 53:1, 16 September 1736.

62 In the first two instances the signature only bears a G., in the la8er, it states ‘Giaco.’

63 The Gile8a were ‘nobili rurali.’ For the distinction between ‘nobili maggiori’ or ‘castellani’ (who became the lords) and ‘nobili rurali’ (who held minor privileges), see Quaglia et al., Arborio, 18, 26 and 229. See also Giovanni Deambrogio, ‘Nobili castellani e nobili rurali di Arborio,’ in Giovanni Deambrogio and Giovanni Donna d’Oldenico, Aspe7i sociali ed economici del vercellese durante il cinquecento ed il seicento, Quaderni dell’istituto di belle arti di Vercelli 11 (Vercelli: Istituto di Belle Arti di Vercelli, 1971), 11 ff. Deambrogio (20–21) states that the name Gile8a appears in documents as nobile d’Arboro and that, along with the other aristocratic families of the place, they were patrons of the now destroyed church of S. Maria di Piazza. The Liber Baptizatorum Ecclesiae Parochialis Sanctae Mariae de Platea [that is, S. Maria di Piazza] ab anno 1660 ad annum 1822 records the birth in 1660 of Giovanni Ba8ista, son of Giacomo and Elisabe8a Gile8a (ibid., 31). Quaglia, in Quaglia et al., Arborio, 53, lists the patrons of the church in the eighteenth century.

64 Quaglia, in Quaglia et al., Arborio, 33. The town was thus called until last century.

65 Bucherie, ‘Mise en scène des pouvoirs,’ 3.

66 Giovanni Ba8ista De Rossi, La Roma so7oranea cristiana, 3 vols (Rome: Cromo‑litografia pontificia, 1864–77), vol. 2, 128 and 381.

67 Jäggi, ‘Graffiti as a Medium for Memoria,’ 747.

68 Ibid., 748.

69 Idem.

70 Thierry, ‘Remarques sur la pratique de la foi,’ 437.

71 Ibid., 437–8.

72 Ibid., 439: ‘Il est vraisemblable que le tableau a joué le rôle d’une icône à pouvoir miraculeux.’

73 See s.v. ‘History’: ‘A wri8en narrative constituting a continuous methodical record, in order of time, of important or public events, esp. those connected with a particular country, people, individual, etc.’ Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford:



Oxford University Press, 2003). For Arborio’s graffiti as historical records, see my article ‘Etched in Stucco: Graffiti as Witness of History,’ The Writing of the Walls, special issue of Descant 118 (2002), 7–24.

74 Michel de Certeau, The Writing of History, trans. Tom Conley (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 46.

75 I borrow the notion of ‘actors’ and ‘spectators’ in history from Cole8e Beaune’s edition of Journal d’un bourgeois de Paris de 1409 à 1449 (Paris: Librairie générale française, 1990), 13.

76 In my ‘Memory on the Wall: Graffiti on Religious Wall Paintings,’ in The Cultural Processes of Appropriation, ed. Kathleen Ashley and Véronique Plesch, special issue of the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 32:1 (2002), 167–97, I suggested that Arborio’s inscriptional practice involved multiple appropriations of location (the chapel, the frescoes, the saints), but that these were ultimately meant for the town to appropriate history – to literally, make it its own.

77 Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti‑Structure (Chicago: Aldine, 1969).

78 ‘Myths and Rituals: A General Theory,’ Harvard Theological Review 35 (1942), 71. Emphasis his.

79 ‘Graffiti and Ritualization: San Sebastiano at Arborio,’ in Medieval and Early Modern Rituals: Formalized Behavior in Europe, China and Japan, ed. Joëlle Rollo‑Koster (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 127–46.

80 Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, trans. Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960).

81 Victor Turner, ‘Variations on a Theme of Liminality,’ in Secular Ritual, ed. Sally F. Moore and Barbara Myerhoff (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1977).

82 Kluckhohn, ‘Myths and Rituals,’ 66. See also Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 120: ‘formalization effectively determines content, transforming the specific into the general forms of a natural and eternally preexisting order.’

83 Pierre Nora, ed., Les lieux de mémoire, 3 vols (Paris: Gallimard, 1984).

84 Pierre Nora, ‘Entre mémoire et histoire: La problématique des lieux,’ in Les lieux de mémoire, vol. I, La Republique, xix; Pierre Nora, ‘General Introduction: Between Memory and History,’ in Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, vol. 1, Conflicts and Divisions, ed. Pierre Nora, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 3.

85 See my ‘Body of Evidence: Devotional Graffiti in a Piedmontese Chapel,’ in Text and Visuality. Word and Image Interactions 4 (Acts of the Fi>h International Conference on Word and Image Studies, Scripps College, Claremont, March 1999).

86 A good example is provided by the ‘holy dolls’ studied by Christiane Klapisch‑Zuber, ‘Holy Dolls: Play and Piety in Florence in the Qua8rocento,’ in Looking at Italian Renaissance Sculpture, ed. Sarah Blake McHam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 111–127.

87 Butler, Alps and Sanctuaries, 234, drily stressed the frequency of this practice in regard to San Cristoforo in Mendrisio: ‘As usual, people have scratched their names on the frescoes.’



88 For instance, on the back of the alabaster sculpture of the Trinity by Hans Multscher (c. 1430). Reproduced in Henk van Os, The Art of Devotion 1300–1500 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 124–5. Prayers were incised in the fi>eenth and sixteenth centuries, such as: ‘Lord God, do not abandon me,’ ‘Mary, come to my aid.’

89 Joseph‑Claude Poulin, ‘Entre magie et religion. Recherches sur les utilisations marginales de l’écrit dans la culture populaire du haut moyen âge,’ in La culture populaire au moyen âge, ed. Pierre Boglioni (Montreal: L’Aurore, 1979), 123–43.

90 Ibid., 137. This category also comprises scrolls which are worn on the body and le8ers that have thaumaturgic power, o>en regardless of their contents, because they were generated by or came into close contact with holy figures.

91 Richard L. Kagan, ‘A World Without Walls: City and Town in Colonial Spanish America,’ in City Walls. The Urban Enceinte in Global Perspective, ed. James D. Tracy (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 119. The expression comes from a seventeenth‑century Mexican author.

92 See my ‘Body of Evidence.’

93 For a more in‑depth comparison of ta8ooing and graffiti, in particular those made on pictorial bodies, see my ‘Memory on the Wall,’ esp. 187–8. On ta8ooing in general, I have found the book edited by Jane Caplan, Wri7en on the Body: The Ta7oo in European and American History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000) very helpful.

94 In my ‘Graffiti and Ritualization,’ I further address the destructive dimension inherent in graffiti made on painted surfaces.

95 Michel Foucault, ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,’ in Language, Counter‑Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. Donald F. Bouchard, trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), 148. On Foucault and the body, see Judith Butler, ‘Foucault and the Paradox of Bodily Inscriptions,’ Journal of Philosophy 86:11 (1989), 601–7.

96 Maurice Halbwachs, Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1952).

97 Arthur Danto, ‘The Vietnam Veterans Memorial,’ The Nation, 31 August 1985, 153, quoted in Marita Sturken, ‘The Wall, the Screen, and the Image: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial,’ Representations 35 (1991), 120.

98 Sturken, ibid.

99 Marianne Doezema in Marianne Doezema and June Hargrove, The Public Monument and Its Audience (Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1977), 7.

100 James E. Young, ‘Ecrire le monument: site, mémoire, critique,’ Annales ESC 3 (1993), 729–43, esp. 732 and 740: ‘une oeuvre d’art crée pour le public, qui peut donc et doit être évaluée en fonction de sa capacité à produire des réactions humaines.’

101 Ibid., 741.

102 Armando Petrucci, Writing the Dead: Death and Writing Strategies in the Western Tradition, trans. Michael Sullivan (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 1998). See also Béatrice Fraenkel, ‘Les écritures exposées,’ Linx 31 (1994), 99–110.

103 Béatrice Fraenkel, Les écrits de septembre. New York 2001 (Paris: Textuel), 23.



104 Idem.

105 Ibid., 24.

106 ‘[U]ne oeuvre civique commune,’ 64.

107 ‘Memory on the Wall.’

108 ‘Pour tous ces groupes en quête d’autonomie et de pouvoir, la mémoire longue représente un instrument, le cas échéant, une arme. Le meilleur fondement de la légitimité, c’est bien l’antichitas.’ Charles de la Roncière, ‘Conclusions: de la mémoire vécue à la tradition, perception et enregistrement du passé,’ in Temps, mémoire, tradition au moyen âge: actes du XIIIe Congrès de la Société des historiens médiévistes de l’enseignement supérieur public, 4–5 juin 1982 (Aix‑en‑Provence: Université de Provence, and Marseille: J. Laffi8e, 1983).

109 Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 141.


“Destruction or Preservation?: The Meaning of Graffiti at Religious Sites.” In Art, Piety and...

Documents

Transcript of “Destruction or Preservation?: The Meaning of Graffiti at Religious Sites.” In Art, Piety and...