Location: Cripta della Basilica di San Francesco, piazza San Francesco
By: niArt
From 10 October to 20 November 2009

In one of the most beautiful and evocative places in the capital of Italian art, World Heritage of Unesco, in the Basilica of San Francesco, the tempestuous and fertile creative imagination of Felice Nittolo has created for the lovers of
mosaics and culture a new and original surprise. In the crypt of the Basilica, permanently immersed in water from the water table, the ancient fragments
of the mosaic fl ooring that covered the apse illuminate by a magical evocative light the imagination of the visitor who, as in the case of Jung, seem to become disorientated. A strong emotional impression is produced which aff ects those who see it permanently. Felice Nittolo too has passed through this artistic and mental itinerary confi rming that with his works he has absorbed fully the heritage of a cultural patrimony which in Ravenna extends back through time to the first centuries AD. His mosaic spheres that fl oat on the incredibly clear waters of the crypt seem suspended in the air, creating an immediate connection between what is above and below, before and after, forcing the visitor to leap continually between the past and the present. Things of beauty are hidden and their presence almost denied, typical of a city that prefers to conceal jealously the lights and refl ections of its polychrome mosaics inside austere plain brick walls almost
as if wanting to keep them away from the eyes of the ignorant masses. "A city of silence" and city of light but also of water. Caputaquarum et caput-mundi, an aristocratic city already adult and great when Rome had not yet been founded.
With his geometric fi gures Nittolo has been able to condense all these myths and symbols, placing them in a new, live, palpitating reality. (R.B.)