"Many years ago, when I arrived in Villafranca, I was told that I had three great faults, three things that were wrong. The first was that I wasn't from there, the second was that I had too much desire to do too many things and the third was that I'm a woman"
(Anna, inhabitant of Villafranca).
That’s what Anna, a sculptress artist, confided to me when we met during a few days of residence in
the lands of Lunigiana, while I was working on a project about the Ethnographic Museum, a place
dedicated to the historical memory of everyday objects of the ancient peasant civilization. Starting
from the fascination towards a terracotta saucer used to cure the evil eye and which once belonged to
a healer, I tried to investigate the echoes of this ancient practice of therapeutic magic, through
meetings and evidences with local people :
"I don't remember very well what my mum saw, but I know that she used a plate with a little water in
it, she used it like a small glass, she made a candle wick, she dipped it inside the oil, inside the little
glass of oil, and set it on fire. Then She said some words, something like: 'I say three Our Fathers to
remove the evil eye from this person'. She repeated the three Our Fathers and drained five drops of
oil. If the oil remained compact, therefore round, it meant that you did not have the evil eye. If the oil
was spread, she said instead that you had the evil eye. Sometimes strange shapes would come, like
a stomach and then she would say that it would have hit the stomach, or a head shape and she would
say that it would have hit you in the head. I know my mother did it and took it off, she took off the evil
eye in this way, many others used salt instead, but my mother always did it with oil"
(Anonymous inhabitant of Villafranca).
I eventually realized how to, a contemporary eye, these objects reveal, how much the subdivision of
gender roles in the peasant world was subject to a rigid dichotomy, where the man were for work and
power, while the woman for care and hospitality. I therefore tried to investigate the traces of the
stereotype of the figure of the healer, looking for its presence in some women of Lunigiana and in their
aspect. Through the frontal photographic portrait I tried to reflect on how the distorted representation
of this mysterious figure is strongly rooted in the collective imagination and in our gaze as observers,
and it’s still evocating suggestions and ways of thinking even in the contemporary world. The
stereotypes and preconceptions of the past are still playing a predominant role in the development of
contemporary identity and they are becoming limits and/or models to which it seems necessary to
adhere and to conform. As well as the genesis of the evil eye, the identity crisis also carries with it a
precise and common symptomatology: forms of illnesses, anxiety, turmoil and a feeling like you
always have "eyes on you". The main causes of the evil eye are, in fact, feelings such as envy, anger
and jealousy towards the unfortunate person and the curse can be generated through fake
compliments or accusations, such as those addressed to Anna. The healer's terracotta saucer,
preserved in the Ethnographic Museum, becomes a fundamental Leitfossil not only for its historical
legacy, but also for the importance that it still exercises even during the present time.
