La morfologia degli ex–voto dipinti. Dal rito della “doppia morte” alla rappresentazione della vittoria.

Painted ex–votos have spanned more than five centuries of Italian history, reflecting the economic, social, and cultural transformations. The recurring elements found in the painted votive tablets allow us to interpret their composition principles, according to the morphological approach we have borrowed from Propp’s works. The ex–voto can be said to narrate a whole story in a single image, and this “format” has kept its structure unchanged over the centuries. In this contribution, we have studied its morphology through six identified and coded functions. Furthermore, we have provided some examples of the great variety of singularities that ex–votos tell us about, starting with a very ancient and little–known ritual known as the “double death”, up to graces received for sporting victories or in ceremonial contexts. In the first case we discuss the “à répit” shrines where mothers brought stillborn children in the hope that the ritual itself would allow them to come back to life for the time necessary for baptism, and thus avoiding limbo. In the second case, the ex–votos tell of graces received for positive events (rather than negative ones as is usually the case) such as winning a Palio race or being able to play in prestigious football teams, and even in the National Team. Finally, the contribution provides the reader with a summary of statistical analyses conducted on a sample of ten thousand Italian painted ex–votos, filed and photographed in our Asclepius Project with reference to the social actor model conceived and designed by the sociologist Luciano Gallino.