Immaginario e morfologia degli ex-voto dipinti in Provenza e in Italia

Imagery and Morphology of the Ex-votos Painted in Provence and in Italy. A database of four thousand painted ex-votos from Provence and ten thousand from Italy are the basis of the study that the two authors have been carrying out for over forty years with a quantitative and qualitative approach. A historical, sociological, semiological and morphological picture emerges that delivers to the reader the cultural models that are conveyed through social representations and the imagery of painted votive tablets. We are talking about a format that, born in the wealthiest classes about five centuries ago, has maintained the initial principles of composition and has spread becoming an integral part of popular material culture, without solution of continuity. The ex-votos show the strategies that men and women have adopted to survive, persist and replicate themselves, as biological and cultural entities.