A project combining painting, photography and disability, conceived and curated by director Adamo Antonacci. This is the exhibition 'Divine Creatures' that will be hosted from Saturday 29 April to Tuesday 30 May at the Church of S. Paolo a Ripa d'Arno, in Pisa, after having been featured at the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo in Florence, at the Vatican Museums in Vatican City, at the Frescoed Rooms of the Municipality of Pistoia and at the Church of the Servants in Rimini.
The exhibition, realised under the patronage of the Municipality of Pisa and with the contribution of the Pisa Foundation, will be inaugurated tomorrow, Saturday 29 April, at 4.00 p.m., and will be open until 30 May on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays from 3.30 p.m. to 7.00 p.m. and on Sundays from 11.00 a.m. to 1.00 p.m.
Starting from a selection of ten famous works of sacred art illustrating the human story of Christ - from the Incarnation in Mary's virginal womb to the supper in Emmaus - Antonacci has conceived the staging of ten 'tableaux vivants' interpreted by differently abled children.
These tableaux vivants, created with special attention to the individual actors and their specific needs, were immortalised by the lens of photographer Leonardo Baldini and then placed side by side with the original model. It took six months to create the photographic works and involved 45 people, including technical staff, disabled girls and boys and their families. Editing the pictures required many hours of work and special techniques, but the decision was not to retouch the disabled interpreters who were asked to interpret the scene and not simply repeat the movements and expressions of the subjects of the pictures.
The ten revisited masterpieces are: Annunciation of Palermo by Antonello da Messina (1476), Annunciation by Caravaggio (1609), Adoration of the Child by Gherardo delle Notti (1620), Angiolino musicante by Rosso Fiorentino (1521), The Kiss of Judas by Giuseppe Montanari (1918), Ecce Homo by Lodovico Cardi known as Cigoli (1607), Christ and the Cyrenean by Titian (c. 1560), Lament over the Dead Christ by Mantegna (1475-80), Transporting Christ to the Sepulchre by Antonio Ciseri (1870) and Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus (1606).
