Tre famiglie: il ricambio di una élite di signori a Camerano.

The recent restoration of exquisite stucco statues and other seventeenth-century artwork inside the parish church of the municipality of Camerano Casasco, a community not far from Asti in the Piedmont region of northwestern Italy, provides a generous glimpse into the strategies of artistic patronage and ceremonial display enacted by a succession of changing local elites. Politically separate and distinct communities, Camerano and Casasco were originally seigniorial holdings of rival branches of the Asinaris, one of Asti’s powerful merchant families of the late middle ages. By early modern times, Casasco became embedded, and in many ways ensconced and sheltered – particularly for all practical purposes of state taxation as well as of religious organization-- within the larger framework of Camerano and of its new ruling families: the Valpergas and the Villas, who were close allies of the winning faction in the so-called civil wars under the regency of Christine of Savoy. The consolidation of local power over both communities by the new elite was underscored by meticulous care in the strategic refocusing of religious and devotional landmarks, as well as in the formation a single, unified administrative and territorially boiunded community.