Coming from London where religion, when visible, tends to be multi faith, I’m struck by the abundance of Catholic imagery and iconography when visiting Italy, and how this imagery coexists with other signs and visual expression. As a young teenager I developed a love of art history and associated images of the Madonna as something I would see in books, galleries and museums rather than in situ.
Here are some pictures I took in Lecce the other week:
The picture below is a section of a wall in a local restaurant – :
A wooden cheese board at a tourist shop:
Detail of chalk street art on gravelly road:
I liked the design of the nuns’ letterbox, with the word SUORE engraved in capitals:
A wall with graffiti and votive shrine:
Graffiti proclaiming the city space as antifascist juxtaposed with chalk representation of the local Saint Orontius of Lecce, known in Italian as Sant’Oronzo:
In this security booth the guards had cut both square notebook paper and image of Christ in clear plastic containers:
