Type of publication: Journal Article

Erin Giffin, “Détruire, reconstruire, redéfinir: la fragmentation volontaire de la Santa Casa de Loreto et ses altérations répliquées,” Perspective : actualité en histoire de l’art, themed publication: Détruire. Vol. 2018-2 (2018), p. 209-217.

As the site of the Annunciation, the Santa Casa di Loreto resonates with the past, acting as a potent pilgrimage destination in Catholic Europe. But this Nazarene building does not receive devotion in the Holy Land. The Santa Casa resides first in the eastern Italian town of Loreto—to which the edifice purportedly flew in the thirteenth century—and also in the many copies of the edifice populating church naves, chapels, and cloisters throughout Europe. Signs of tactile communion appear in many of these Sante Case, darkening the carefully rendered uneven brick and stone interspersed with purposefully crumbling frescoed surfaces. Each Holy House effectively conveys the contemporary structure into new communities, “performing” devotion through perpetual acts of fragmentation that reinforce Loretan adoration.

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