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INTRODUCTION TO THE PAPER PULP
The
secularization of the consciences of these last decades and the laicism
practiced, even if not admitted, have removed the Italians, physically and
culturally, from the places and the traditional testimonies of cult.
This
is a phenomenon that occupies and takes care the ecclesiastic hierarchies in
order to the coherence between faith and experience of life of the Christians.
Between the declarations of true religious confessional belongings and practical
and the own one, often, there is a incongruousness that does not seem to provoke
particular traumas spiritual to the greater part of our conational and comes
lived with a nature, disarming, to the eyes of which place the problem in terms
of responsibility of the single conscience.
From
some time, but, it has gone growing the attention in the comparisons of the
cultural assets understandings like discovery of the roots of cultural
belongings and - in it ambles to you for elites - like pure taste and
intellectual curiosity if not true investment and just.
On
the push of this innovation the interest - undifferentiated for hour - for many
of those testimonies of the past thought of insufficient cultural value is
growing (and economic) like, in the Salento as an example, the paper pulp.
It
knows to you under glass bells, residual toys of far infancy, bass-relief of the
Protecting ones that dominated the heads of the beds of the grandfathers,
several junk. Incomes all a series of objects abandons you to the powder of
placed to you domestic and, sometimes, it cancels to you from the memory, it
recovers and exposed to you in the rooms like sign of an intellectual tendency
that oscillates between the taste and the fashion and, above all, of a found
again equilibrium with the memory.
The big wave of
this tendency has been manifested also in the churches where to the ancient
popular religiosity, made of practical devout people, unchanged from centuries
and sandier, second an articulate, but always identical liturgic calendar, has
been replaced, at least in the small centers, one new shape of set up approach
to the sacred one on the interest for the recovery of the objects of cult of
artistic value like propaedeutics phase to a renewed religious engagement.
But
the positive valence of this new tendency even comes diminish from the lack of
culture of many commitments - laics and ecclesiastical - and from the
insufficient sensibility of some operating fast of the most elementary technical
slight knowledge of the restoration. It turns out to you, then, instead
representing new possibility of acquaintances on the art works, end in order to
become lost occasions and, sometimes, they compromise same integrity of the
manufactureds subordinates to participation of recovery.
After all the
restoration operation , instead more helping
l ' work to living to along and transmitting the
cultural and religious values of which is carrier, it ends in order to damage it
and the patrimony of cult and art for puts into effect it them and the future
generations turn out some impoverish. In order to modify this state of things in
its more injurious consequences deepened acquaintance of the phenomenon of the
paper pulp is necessary to have one, of its artists, its vicissitudes, the
problems legacies to its conservation. And in order to obtain that we would have
to decide of a finalized center of documentation to such destination.
But
it continues to lack a museum the paper pulp to Lecce.
In
the Salento the studies on this artistic production, for how much numerous, deal
alone particular aspects (but rarest exceptions) and are devoid of documentary
searches that allow to decide of sure elements on which to warp one weft of
scientific acquaintances.
If we
only had the possibility to know the map of the spread of the works exited from
the leccesi laboratories outside from the Salento and outside of
Italy in the period comprised between the end dell
' ott or the one hundred and first halves of
the nine hundred (admitted that it will be never possible to write up one),
perhaps could have l ' exact perception of that it
has represented this shape of art for Lecce and the Earth of Otranto, it is on
the cultural plan that on that economic.
To
slide the directory of honors and prizes, assign
to you to main paper pulp salentini present in all
the exposures national and intemationals, the feeling is had clean that in that
period had renewed the same conditions that two centuries before had constituted
the bench marks of the baroque production: availability of specialistic labor
and highest quality of the manufactureds ones with added of one the greater
facility of transport and costs infinitely more material bottoms regarding more
diffuse like wood, marble or chalk.
It is
necessary, then, to have an exact perception of the value of the paper pulp in
the within of the culture salentina.
Draft, first of all, discovery the existing nexuses between this shape of art
and the character of the Salentini; not only for the innate tendecy for the
ephemeral one that, for many backs still characterizes them although the changed
historic-cultural conditions, but also for those features of fantasy, irony,
theatricality, sense of the equilibrium, cordiality, attachment to the authentic
values and, also, it appeal to of the transgression, of the grimace,
nonconformism. To comprise, in bottom, than the peculiar elements of the paper
pulp they are similar to those anthropological ones of the most important
Salentini of which also remains always that one to know itself to adapt, to
fold, like the material, to any transformation and change.
To
clear this will have to be task of the institutions to promote the acquaintance,
the conservation and protection of the works of art in paper pulp avoiding the
error to neglect of the developments, also of market, for the future.
And
this objective could be caught up exclusively with one solid formation for new
the operating ones. Too many improvisators to decore of the name of main paper
pulp! The masters are little, today like in the past; the only difference is
that a time many collaborating found job in the large ones shops (botteghe) or
in the plants since fort was one asks characterized; today, that the
culture of the souvenir exists nearly exclusively , it is stretched to
supply storees and supermarkets without to cure more than a lot the quality of
the products, but rarest exceptions.
In
the within of the discover one of the paper pulp is necessary to plan of
the river l planning the enthusiasm of the
initiatives of single with the requirements of the market the waves to avoid
separation between qualified acquaintance and production; to the inside of this
unavoidable nexus the public institutions will have to carry out their role
(University, Superintendence, Province) like guarantors of a process that is at
the same time cultural and economic. And if the planning will be very aimed, new
operating possibilities for the field with the contribution of other disciplines
will be able to be opened also like, as an example, the design.
To
difference of the leccese stone, that it is material native, the paper pulp has
arrived to Lecce, not is been born.
When
, like and in that measure has deeply rooted in
the culture salentina - as well as to be defined
leccese, like the stone and the times - it can be debate object.
That
the main artifice of its affirmation goes recognized in Mauro Manieri - which it
would represent the baroque artist in the complete sense of the term - or that
the spread is wanted to be anticipated some nell '
within of the ephemeral apparatuses of the festivity and that, through the
baroque yard, it is landed to the true statuaria and own, they will be the
studies and the documents to confirm it in future.
The
1730 and discovery Immaculate of the matrix of Casarano, executed between 1720,
placed to the internal of a machine of altar in leccese stone, for the quality
of the modeled one, the nature of the insertion in a “lapideo” context
and the style very various paternity from that one of the Ways, push to us to
assume that in Earth of Otranto I use of such made could not little be moment.
The set mounting of the work would make to think to a habit consolidated in the
assemblage of two various materials like stone and paper pulp us.
The
use to place to head-altars the two torch-beares, to maintain angels end nearly
to our days, cannot be only seen like the attempt to realize, cheaply, two
complementary figures of the altar that, if carved in different materials from
the paper pulp, would have had costs more elevates to you; but like a custom,
typical of the traditional yard, of I use contemporary, of various materials
like stucco, paper pulp, wood beyond to the stone. And this is made notorius, at
least between the attache's to the jobs.
Of
the rest thick the presence of qualified mains represents only an aspect of the
dominated yard salentino, often, from the personality of numerous foremans-entrepreneurs
which sometimes were also sculptors; but, to the occurrence, if the plan
demanded it, they used of the work of other artists which collaborated nearly in
fixed way with the companies. For all, it is worth the society between Of
Bordering and the Tarantino or between the Pen and the Zimbalo.
The
presence of entire statues in paper pulp or parts modeled to relief to the
inside of blots some of altar or, however, of “lapidei” contexts, it is found
hour in very many edifices. For all they are worth little citations of easy
reply like, to Lecce, in the former-church of S.Francesco d' Assisi, the altars
of S.Luigi (sculptures of Made happy Michelina, S.Ludovico, S.Elisabetta),
of Announced ( a cherub on the time to stucco), of the Immaculate one
(perizoma of the two angels on the cimasa); to Galatina, in the church of
the Spirits, the six sculptures placed on consoles in the walls of within (S.
Gregorio, S.Nicola from Tolentino, S. Domenico di Guzman, S. Caterina from
Siena, S. Cristina, S.Domenica); to Meshes, in the church of S. Nicholas,
the sculptures placed to the capialtari nearly all the altars of the lateral
navate ones; to Tuglie, in the church matrix, decorations to rosettes and
angels long all the “specchiature” of the walls removed in the post-war
period. Without to count, outside from the Salento, the participations decorated
you of leccesi artists in the cathedral of reconstructed Nola after the fire of
1861. And the directory could still continue with other known already famous
examples or less.
Quanto allo sviluppo tecnico di questa forma d'arte non va sottaciuto che le
nostre conoscenze, anche a livello nazionale, non sono paragonabili a quelle di
altre espressioni artistiche come la pittura o la scultura. Soprattutto non sono
ancora del tutto chiare le sequenze evolutive, sul piano strettamente tecnico,
tra le diverse aree culturali e le loro reciproche, eventuali influenze.
In
fondo la stessa povertà del materiale ha impedito, in passato, una sua
valorizzazione sul piano critico in quanto arte minore.
Per
favorire un'inversione di tendenza in futuro occorrerà che le istituzioni
innanzitutto mutino atteggiamento culturale nei confronti della paper pulp e la
considerino espressione peculiare (non più popolare) e fondamentale per la
comprensione della civiltà salentina, riconoscendole la stessa dignità con la
quale hanno sempre guardato all'architettura , alla pittura ed alla scultura.
Insomma che alla paper pulp leccese venga riconosciuto quel ruolo di arte guida
che per oltre un secolo - e ancora oggi- individua culturalmente nel mondo,
accanto al barocco, il capoluogo ed il territorio del Salento.
