Oxford's Ashmolean Museum is as intriguing as the photographs of reputedly miraculous religious art in its current exhibition, writes Angela Long
Rosa Mosto was in childbirth. The 30-year-old Italian woman was in severe pain and the doctor seemed helpless. It was 1771 and a woman who had difficulties delivering her child had few options. "If I am going to die, leave me alone and stop tormenting me," the resigned woman told the medic. So he went home. A midwife brought to Rosa's bedside a picture of a statue of the Virgin Mary in the local church at Recco, near Genoa, Italy. Rosa gathered her last strength to kiss the picture.
But then she began to feel better. "After a few minutes the pain had passed," she recalled 50 years later. She revived and the child was born. Her family went to the church to give thanks, and the surgeon admitted that without the help of Mary, "my skill could do nothing".
Why did Rosa Mosto recover? She and many of her compatriots have no doubt it was divine intervention - a miracle. The statue, subsequently known as Our Lady of the Nativity and of Prayer, still stands in the Recco oratory, and is carried through the streets of the Ligurian coast town every September 8th in a festive firework procession.
The mystery and mysticism of such stories, all from an area around Genoa, is the subject of a small but fascinating exhibition at one of Britain's most extraordinary museums, the Ashmolean in Oxford.
Spectacular Miracles: Images of Supernatural Power from North-west Italy is a curious exhibition. As one reviewer noted, it could be said to be more of a hint of an exhibition than an exhibition - all the "exhibits" are photographs of the statues and images reputed to have extra-terrestrial powers. And they are presented in a coy, oblique manner, viewed in a keyhole-camera fashion through a 3.5m (10ft) high, white rectangular box that takes up a long narrow room. Only one person at a time can view the image. The effect is a little alienating, and slightly eerie.
Two academics, who also happen to be married, Dr Gervase Rosser and Dr Jane Garnett, are the authors of the exhibition and a forthcoming book on the same subject. "We work in history and history of art, and this came out of a sabbatical year we spent in Italy several years ago," says Dr Rosser.
They chose the area around Genoa deliberately, because it is not the deeply religious and traditionally poorer south of Italy, where such beliefs would be expected to have a stronger hold. "In fact, when we were visiting one civic leader, and explained what we were looking for, there was a long silence. Eventually he said, 'I really think you should go south.'"
Genoa, an industrial and port city of 700,000, has a proud left-wing tradition - so there was reluctance to be seen as superstitious zealots on a number of levels. "They don't like to be associated in the same breath with some of the cults of Africa and South America."
Yet, Rosser says, he and Garnett found that devotion to the miracle-icons was strong, and cut through all levels of society. "Devotees of the cults appear even in the most cosmopolitan and industrialised sections of the middle class." Rosser and Garnett have also found examples of new cults emerging, and fusions, for example in South America where a holy image (or copy of one) brought from Italy by emigrants ends up in a natural setting, such as a tree, regarded as mystical by native peoples.
They have not yet extended their research to Ireland, although they are aware of marvels such as the moving statue of Ballinspittle in Cork. "We do know a little about what has happened in Ireland, but I'm afraid so far we have concentrated on what you might call warmer climates.
"One of the things that has pleased us about the show is that it has attracted a lot of interest, and a lot of that has been hostile, with some remarks to the effect that this is not what one comes to a museum to see!" Rosser says, happily enough. "But it stimulates thought." And is that not a worthy enough aim for any exhibition?
THE CURIOUS exhibition is a good match for this venue, for the Ashmolean itself is a curiosity. It sits grandly in the centre of Oxford, a stone neo-classical building from the 19th century facing the Randolph Hotel. But inside it is a crazy mixed-up kid, a little bit of this, a little bit of that; Chinese screens, Egyptian antiquities and "posy rings", romantic Victorian bits of jewellery with messages of eternal devotion inscribed upon them, all rubbing edges.
Britain's oldest museum, it was founded in 1683, in an earlier building, and is now the subject of a £15 million (€22 million) redevelopment project. The name comes from Elias Ashmole, who presented to Oxford University a collection largely amassed by his friend John Tradescant. Officially, it is a museum of art and archaeology, and it bears the stamp of a time when interesting objects could be presented just like that - "Here are a lot of interesting objects!" - without the need for a theme and expert classification. Once it was very much a happy clutter, with access to ostrich eggs and a stuffed dodo to delight the Victorian visitor. It has more manners now, but cool and minimalist it is not.
The quirkiness of the museum has liberated it into staging new and different shows, such as Spectacular Miracles. The next exhibition to open, Pilgrimage, from January 11th, looks at the role devotional journeys play in the world's major religions, utilising items such as illuminations of the Canterbury Tales and miniature representations of Mecca.
Oxford is only about an hour from London on the train from Paddington, which costs about £30/€44 for a standard day return; longer on bus services such as the Oxford Tube, which is frequent and cheap (£13/€20 return). Wander through the city of dreaming spires to the Ashmolean, and dream of another magical city, bustling in the sun, but beneath the commercial thrust, intermittently beholden to its subterranean spirituality.
• Spectacular Miracles runs until Jan 29. The Ashmolean is at Beaumont Street, Oxford (0044-1865-278-000); www.ashmol.ox.ac.uk. Admission is free. The Moving Image: Zones of the Miraculous in Italy and the Mediterranean World 1500-2000 is to be published in 2007
