Against you, O unclean world, I must protest!

It is with these words that St. Pier Damiani opens his biography of Romualdo, the Ravenna saint and founder of the Camaldolese congregation featured in the famous painting created by Guercino and preserved in the Ravenna City Art Museum.
St. Pier Damiani's protest is addressed to 10th-century society and the Church of the time, which he considered to be devoid of virtue and led by "haughty people who arrogantly rise up because of their vain eloquence or empty philosophy." A condemnation of ease and debauchery to which Pier Damiani contrasts the monastic wisdom of Romualdo, taken as an ideal model for a general reform of ecclesiastical and civil society. The saint's life thus takes on the value of an admonition, an exaltation of virtue and an exhortation to change.
Guercino dwells on the image of Romualdo in ecstasy. Next to him is the devil, portrayed with the features of a man with monstrous features, a reddish complexion and feet and hands with long claws, opposed by an angel intent on whipping him with a rod.
It is the representation of the "unclean world" in which insolent humanity clashes with perfection and divine virtue. Light and darkness are in constant struggle in an enveloping dance in which, alternately, one takes over the other.
It is on this image that the corporal action of the nanou group takes place, introduced by the narration of the museum curator. A choreographic installation in which dancers move among the painting's decomposed images, reproduced serially through monitors and prints, and distributed throughout the museum's exhibition area in which the work is located, thus investigated and amplified.
Fragments and details are recomposed through an overall vision animated by bodies moved by the painting's contrasting forces.
The altarpiece with Saint Romuald was commissioned from Guercino for the Classe monastery in Ravenna. It was made in 1642 and exhibited at the abbey church dedicated to the same saint along with works by Carlo Cignani, Saint Benedict, and Marcantonio Franceschini, Saints Bartholomew and Severus in Glory.
The group with the three altarpieces has been reconstituted and exhibited at the Ravenna City Art Museum.

Giorgia Salerno