mail: Bill Thayer

Italiano

Help

Up

Home

Refuge of Sinners
The Madonna del Sagraeto

Not every wayside shrine in Italy is out in the countryside, nor do they all conform to one of the typical schemes — a little pillar-shaped structure, roofed and niched; or a tiled plaque or niche on a wall — with which you've become very familiar if you've navigated my site before. Here in the busy Adriatic fishing port of Chioggia at the south end of the Venetian lagoon, we have a life-size baroque statue serving as the centerpiece of an elegant balustrade along a busy canal; only a continued tradition of three hundred years of devotion differentiate it from an ordinary statue in any city park: but it's enough.

The statue, pleasing if not an extraordinary work of art, is by Alvise Tagliapietra (1670‑1747), who left many other statues in Chioggia as well as in his native Venice and in neighboring Croatia. Carved of imported Istrian marble since there's not much stone in this alluvial region, it is typical of his work: a life-sized female figure marked by a slightly exaggerated contrapposto — that curious stance in which most of the body's weight is on one foot, producing a sort of sway of the corresponding hip. Here the contrapposto is masked by the Virgin's robe, but the effect is still not altogether successful: the Baby Jesus has been left to stand on billowing drapery otherwise unsupported.

The balustrade and its smaller statues date to 1714, during Chioggia's second great period of prosperity; they originally stood in front of the town hall, but that building burned to the ground in 1817, leaving only the balustrade intact, which was then moved here, to the edge of the Canale Perottolo.

The Perottolo canal was the border of the old town of Chioggia as you walk in from the mainland: Virgin Mother and Child thus protect the town although they face in, not out; more of an ever-present reminder that the world beyond the city is not a safe place, as fishermen on the mercurial Adriatic well know. For a century or so, however, this canal had been reduced to a cul-de‑sac, a sort of marina — call it a parking lot for boats, although it was beautiful; or at least, as a visitor, I found it so — but local poet Angelo Padoan speaks for Chioggia:

Photo © Laura Sambo 2012, by kind permission.

The corrosion of both stone and metal, especially noticeable in the circular strip of iron in the ceiling of the canopy at the very top of the photo above, remind us that we're a few yards from a body of salt water; but since my stay in Chioggia, the canal has been extended again into the thruway it originally was, and the balustrade and all its statues, including the Madonna, have been restored: in the recent view on the right, the canal is new, as are the stone steps and some of the balustrade.

Mother and Child are crowned; behind them the golden baldacchino sports the coats of arms of Chioggia to their right — three paws of its lion rampant is enough to identify it — and of the Counts Donà dalle Rose to their left: argent two fesses gules, in chief three roses of the second. I've been unable to discover why this particular coat of arms, which is not that of the bishop at the time; a good working hypothesis is that they are those of the family who commissioned the shrine, but I just don't know.

The custom soon grew that those condemned to die, on their way to execution beyond the bounds of the city, would stop here to pray; and more recently, the statue became a place where the wives and family members of fishermen in peril on the sea would go to pray: churches are not always open. Popular piety soon called this statue Refugium Peccatorum, the Refuge of Sinners: a title given to the Virgin in the Litany of Loreto, and extending its range to include the entire human race, of course: Mother and Child protect us all, wherever we may be.

I'm indebted to Enrico Veronese for his help in supplying some of the information on this page.
Images with borders lead to more information. The thicker the border, the more information. (Details here.)
	WAYSIDE SHRINES:		Edicole of Italy			OFFSITE:
UP TO:	Chioggia	Veneto	Italy	Home		Co.Ed.Mar: Reopening of the Perottolo Canal
A page or image on this site is in the public domain ONLY if its URL has a total of one *asterisk. If the URL has two **asterisks, the item is copyright someone else, and used by permission or fair use. If the URL has none the item is © Bill Thayer. See my copyright page for details and contact information.