Catalogue essay by Blanche Llewellyn

After her husband Mario Broglio’s death in 1948, Edita Broglio moved to San Michele di Moriano (Lucca, Italy) where she painted “Cristo e la Corriera,” featuring the local church.

The overall aesthetic is dominated by rich and dark hues of purples and blues, evoking the imminent arrival of a powerful and nearly spiritual summer storm.

The blue bus on the painting’s right side, known as the “corriera”,  was a traditional Italian mail delivery, which made the rounds everyday to small, isolated villages. Its arrival typically caused excitement and chaos among villagers, eagerly awaiting news. Thus, the “corriera” served as the primary messenger, paralleling, as depicted in this painting, Christ’s role as the divine messenger – bringing God’s plan to all mankind. In the painting, Christ is depicted as a superior figure, surrounded by all-imposing angels, underscoring his role as the divine messenger, offering spiritual enlightenment, guidance and salvation to humanity.

However, a strange duality emerges. Despite Christ’s dominance on the canvas, his presence appears unnoticed, especially compared to the attention-grabbing postman, representing societal communication. This duality is heightened by the dreamlike scene’s distorted reality. The somber, crescent moon-lit sky suggests nighttime, yet the presence of civilians and a postman implies daytime, possibly morning, when the post was typically delivered. This controversial juxtaposition of day and night blurring temporal boundaries and conveying themes of timelessness or eternity most likely represents the divine or spiritual realm intersecting with the earthly or material world, the balance of opposing forces within the cosmos, or the journey of the soul through light and darkness.