Ex-Voto for I Tatti

An accidental encounter with a slim unprepossessing book on ex-votos, taken at random from one of the shelves of the Berenson Library at I Tatti, leads memoirist and novelist Gina Alhadeff to a series of meditations on miracles, sudden appearances and just as sudden disappearances, and the way a faith in saints or the Virgin Mary might inspire images that interrupt an accident, while representing it, or its nefarious effects, as it’s about to wreak havoc. And so, humans outlive adversity thanks to the powers of faith or those of friendship, not necessarily in that order.The slim volume in question provoked two very different texts: a very personal one, in Italian, at once lighthearted and heartrending, and a descriptive one, in English. Ex-Voto for I Tatti includes both the Italian and English works.

Gini Alhadeff is the author of The Sun at Midday, Tales of a Mediterranean Family and Diary of a Djinn, as well as the translator of Fleur Jaeggy’s I Am the Brother of XX, winner of the 2018 Florio Prize, and of Natalia Ginzburg’s The Road to the City. She also appears as an editor and translator for an anthology of Patrizia Cavalli’s poems, My Poems Won’t Change the World.