Grazia ricevuta

For some time, especially for those who are preparing to carry out investigations in the social field, the research methodology has recommended... leave room for imagination and make use of tools that are not always just traditional ones. This is why, for the purposes of a more correct and in-depth historiography, the humble signs of popular devotion frescoed on country pillars or hung, in the form of votive offerings, on the walls of sanctuaries scattered along the Alpine valleys or in the plain immediately below can also contribute. However crude and naïve they may be, however much they are conceived for the reproduction of entirely personal events, in fact, these suggestive attestations of faith reveal themselves to be inexhaustible sources for those who know how to penetrate them deeply. Sources that drip with history... that great story that overwhelms the individual and passes over him, making him part of the whole. Although small and naive, these paintings tell us about the great events that have characterized the last three centuries: wars, epidemics and the most disastrous social plagues: the harmfulness of work, poverty and infant mortality. Read in this way, ex-votos can become not only useful historiographical sources, but even, if traced back to a territory and the population that characterized it at different moments in history, incredible and appropriate statistical tools.