A Printed Icon in Early Modern Italy

In 1428 a devastating fire destroyed a schoolhouse in the Northern Italian city of Forl leaving only a woodcut of the Madonna and Child that had been tacked to the classroom wall. The people of Forl carried that print now known as the Madonna of the Fire into their cathedral where two centuries later a new chapel was built to enshrine it. In this book Lisa Pon considers a cascade of moments in the Madonna of the Fire''s cultural biography: when ink was impressed onto paper at a now-unknown date; when that sheet was recognized by Forl''s people as miraculous; when it was enshrined in various tabernacles and chapels in the cathedral; when it or one of its copies was and still is carried in procession. In doing so Pon offers an experiment in art historical inquiry that spans more than three centuries of making remaking and renewal.