Felice Nittolo – La luce si fa forma

Felice Nittolo has created three installationsin three different locations within the cathedral complex.
The originality and threedimensional forms of the cross and the sphere confer symbolic support to the theological narration formed by the decorative theme of the Neonian Baptistry and the Archiepiscopal Chapel, in marked contrast to the heretical creed of the Aryans. The golden mosaic cross represents Christ Victorious trampling in the Last Judgment the ‘saeva crimina’, the forces of evil; the large mosaic spheres refer to the mystery of the Trinity, to the shared divinity of the three persons of the same nature and substance – Father, Son and Holy Ghost. In one of the halls of the Archiepiscopal Museum the artist conversely places, next to a mosaic fragment of the twelfth-century ‘Madonna in Prayer’ which was once in the cathedral, a work in mixed technique on canvas. A restitution by subtraction, almost monochromatic, of the prototype Virgin in prayer, imitating the background of a musive image – or that which remains of it after a clumsy fracture, a relic of the vanished past.
Curated by: Linda Kniffitz