Portrait of Rotraut Klein-Moquay in her studio in Arizona, 2002 © David Bordes
The convent basilica of St Rita in Cascia – it is her feast today – nestles in the lovely hills of Umbria, an Italian region of so many saints and artists. And of earthquakes: St Rita’s Basilica was badly damaged in 1980, necessitating expensive repairs, including regilding of the statues.
One of the nuns remembered that twenty years earlier a young couple had presented an ex-voto, a thanks-offering for St Rita’s intercession, which had contained some golf leaf. She fetched a Perspex box containing gold leaf and tiny ingots along with two others blocks of pigment. One was a striking blue like Giotto’s, but far more intense; the other, deep rose. Inside was a handwritten prayer:
