I Sacri Monti e la cultura religiosa e artistica dell'Italia moderna

Study on the importance of “Sacri Monti” (sacred mounts) in religious and artistic culture during Counter-Reformation, emphasizing the affective dramatization of religious piety, through the exigency of linking the Christian message, and its experienceable modalities, with visibility and the concrete meaning of doctrinal contents. In this way, it answers the exigency of realism and identification already present in late medieval religiosity. It is shown the importance of some works that were reference in the period, such as the meditative model of compositio loci proposed by Loyola in his Spiritual Exercises, and the treaties of Carlo Borromeo. The proposed hypothesis is - going against traditional historiographical thesis - that the Sacred Mounts appeared not so much as Counter-Reformist art turned against Protestantism, but as expressions of a mimetic and representative devotional model, which mobilizes psychological dynamisms of those to which it was destined, in order to reach the spiritual level.