ABSTRACT
Many years ago, as I was documenting Passion cycles frescoed in chapels that were part of the Duchy of Savoy, I visited the small oratorio di San Sebastiano, outside the Piedmontese town of Arborio, some 60 kilometers west of Milan, and noticed graffiti scratched on some of the frescoes (Figure 3.1). The mention of a “major plague,” right on the body of St. Anthony Abbot, was both disturbing and moving (Figure 3.2). A few years later, as I was preparing to teach a seminar on the art of late medieval private devotion, I thought again of these inscriptions and began a refection on the phenomenon, which led me to publish several articles. Although I will have the occasion to mention some of the results I offered in these publications— and in so doing present this rich corpus of graffiti, which forms a chronicle documenting the life of a small rural community written by the very folk who were experiencing the events the inscriptions record—what I wish to do in this chapter is to consider the ways in which this material challenges conceptions about graffiti and the way we practice art history.
