Le immagini miracolose di padre Bonaventura Relli. Ricostruzione di un corpus disperso

Abstract

This article examines the sacred images produced by the seventeenth-century Franciscan missionary Bonaventura Relli as objects situated at the intersection of art, devotion, missionary practice, and popular religion. Painted mainly in black ink on yellow silk, these images were not conceived merely as representations, but as materially and ritually effective objects, associated with prayer, healing, protection, childbirth, and other forms of divine intervention. Contemporary sources show that their circulation extended across different social and geographical contexts, from local communities to European courts, and, during Relli's mission in Albania, even crossed confessional boundaries, attracting the interest of both Christians and Muslims. Through the reconstruction of a largely dispersed corpus, the study explores how visual form, materiality, devotional practice, and narratives of miraculous efficacy contributed to the social life of these images. In this perspective, Relli's works emerge not only as artistic artefacts, but also as cultural mediators through which religious identities, relationships, and expectations of supernatural agency were negotiated in seventeenth-century Mediterranean and European contexts.