Handcrafted ex votos in Naples

The practice of ex votos has been widespread in Naples since the Middle Ages, linked to the city’s great sanctuaries and to devotion to the Madonna, the patron saints, and San Gennaro. Over the centuries, sailors, artisans, mothers, and soldiers offered small painted or modeled objects to give thanks after recovering from illness, escaping a shipwreck, or surviving danger. Between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, a true artisanal production of painted tablets, silver hearts, wax figures, and small narrative panels developed, many of which are now preserved in churches such as Gesù Nuovo, Santa Maria del Carmine, and the Cathedral. Ex votos thus became a popular chronicle of the city, made not of kings and battles, but of ordinary lives saved.