di Manuela Candini
Manuela Candini, professor at the Academy of Fine Arts of Bologna and Crona, sends us these not too well-known images of a small treasure from Campania, the Matres Matutae, a name freely translatable into "Mothers of the returning light" and venerated as protectors of women giving birth. Their main characteristic consists in the regal posture (seated on a throne, as from the Neolithic goddess of Catal Huyuk) and in the bundles that envelop the infants, even eight in some cases, held in the lap. These are photos taken in the area that includes the Campania Provincial Museum of Capua and the basilica of Sant'Angelo in Formis/San Michele Arcangelo. The area, along the western terraces of Mount Tifata, is an area of sanctuaries dedicated to water cults since prehistoric times; which has known over the millennia the various stratifications through which all the places whose memory has survived to this day have passed. From the Roman era there remains the trace of a temple dedicated to Diana Tifatina. Period VI-1st century BC
