POPULAR ICONOGRAPHY. – Sacred images have also been represented in ways suited to the taste, beliefs, and needs of the common people, either by inexperienced popular craftsmen or by artists who intentionally addressed the lower classes.
The statements of medieval texts (imagines sunt libri laicorum, invisibilia per visibilia) confirm the great importance attributed to the intrinsic value of representations. This gave rise to a rich and varied production, uninterrupted through the centuries, in which the lyrical synthesis proper to popular art has at times found felicitous and intense expression, while at other times crudity and deformation have prevailed, to the detriment of art. Graphic themes have been handed down, like literary and hagiographical themes, adapting themselves to changing tastes: for example, seventeenth-century popular iconography accentuated the lines and expressions inherited from the medieval tradition, in the quest for ever-greater vividness. Thus the Ecce Homo was increasingly burdened with chains, and his crown of thorns was represented with ever-larger spines; the Sorrowful Virgin appeared pierced by seven enormous swords. Characteristic are the false interpretations to which sacred popular iconography gave rise among the common people: suffice it to recall the legend of St. Kümmernis, which originated in the Flemish countries,
to explain the image of the Holy Face of Lucca, where the Crucified Christ is depicted with long hair and a tunic. Fantastic motifs derived from popular iconography are also recognized in the legends of St. Anthony the Abbot, St. Christopher, etc. From the invention of printing onward, popular iconography achieved immense diffusion throughout Europe by means of broadsheets and booklets with woodcuts, sometimes accompanied by texts in verse or prose. The tradition was preserved through the centuries into recent times, successively adopting new technical means, such as copper engravings and simple or colored lithographs and zincographs. Pilgrimages to shrines, itinerant sellers of sacred images, and ballad singers contributed greatly to its diffusion. Many of these images are found in country houses, and before them families recite the litanies before retiring to rest, or they are placed in stables for the protection of livestock. Similar representations are painted on agricultural carts or on the prows of fishing boats. Of greater significance is sacred popular iconography on rustic furniture, ceramics, and various household objects; still more so in rural and village chapels and churches, both in mural paintings and in sculptures: here one reaches, without any break in continuity, the domain of fine art. A particular aspect, which must be studied separately, is constituted by the votive tablets.