From www.lamiacittanews.it, 25 December 2019
When you meet Cinzia Chiulli, after a wide-ranging, pleasant conversation, you strongly sense that this multifaceted Viterbo artist has a special gift. There is something in her, like an inner strength that never settles, aimed at celebrating Viterbo, its beauty, its wonderful history. Indeed, our protagonist has always worked, and continues to work with skill, to spread the beauties of Viterbo. She began with the Tarot, which, as she herself says, is not a card game, but the transposition of life’s mysteries into something that seems harmless and simple. But the Tarot contains messages of wisdom, meant for the chosen few. Precisely to protect these secret messages, they were cleverly placed in plain sight for all, in the form of innocent playing cards.
When Cinzia discovered that some crusaders had brought Tarot cards to Viterbo, her imagination lit up, and almost in one burst she revisited and renamed all the Major Arcana with 22 characters drawn from Viterbo’s glorious history. And so appeared Frisigello, la Bella Galliana, Pope Alexander IV, Frederick II, Saint Rose, Donna Olimpia Maidalchini, and many others. In seven days (seven being a biblical number), in a work driven by the fever of building something new for Viterbo, Cinzia Chiulli drew them all with her skilled painter’s hand, creating ceramic panels on peperino which, now under the name “Arcani di Faul”, are on display at the Museo del Colle del Duomo in Viterbo. There is naturally also a deck of cards with the same images and a mini-guide explaining the various figures. But the fever that runs through all of our Cinzia Chiulli’s activity is unstoppable. And so our heroine invented the “Percorsi Artistici” (Artistic Paths), which allow those walking the Via Francigena the chance to leave a small personal mark. Indeed, with her “Percorsi Artistici” formula, each pilgrim can write their name on special peperino tiles, coated with a layer of white ceramic. The guides of the Società Via Francigena in Tuscia have already publicised Cinzia Chiulli’s idea, and she receives many visits from pilgrims who, intrigued, want to leave a sign of their passage, taking up Cinzia Chiulli’s idea. Cinzia hopes that the Municipality of Viterbo will soon make available a suitable space to display all these tiles, which will stand as a living testimony to the passage of these pilgrims along the Via Francigena on their way to Rome.
Her constant, daily commitment is also devoted to carrying forward the ancient Viterbo ceramic tradition, whose crowning glory is the prized “Zaffera” majolica, which features a raised blue decoration whose secret evokes “very lofty thought”.
Go and visit her on Via San Pellegrino. Her workshop is at number 27. It is a ground-floor space. Long ago our grandparents kept their stables there, to house the cart and the draught animal. Today these spaces are pleasant places of memory, and host many activities. Go and visit her and you will be amazed at what our Cinzia Chiulli manages to do in that little “nook”, rich in history and enriched by the ideas and the many works of our heroine.
