E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle

The photograph "E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle" was taken in Bergamo Alta, the city hardest hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, during July 2020. The neon sign, created by artist Edoardo De Cobelli, echoes the closing verse of Dante's Inferno and was sold at auction in December of the same year. What struck me in particular was the mixture of sacred elements (the fresco of the Madonna and Child), profane (the Shoe Market) and that which of the profane most closely approximates the perfection of the sacred (Dante's verses). Also striking to me was the fact that those words, emerging from the darkness of the gallery in which they were placed, well represented the re-emergence of the Italian people from the pandemic events that had shaken our country in the preceding months.