Acquasantiera

The stoup, a sacred object that recalls the classic style of its origins in Sicily, is represented with new plastic and decorative styles in pure Made in Italy style.

The widespread use of drawing holy water has given rise to bedside holy water stoups designed to contain holy water in the home, to be used during morning and evening prayers by all members of the family.
In Caltagirone, the oldest majolica stoups known to us date back to the late sixteenth century. On the front of the aedicule it was customary to paint cherub heads or the cross, or some Marian symbol.
In the seventeenth century, however, the patron saints of the places where they were produced were depicted. The images, often made up of small columns, archivolt and tympanum, are in relief and almost always in a single colour, in dark manganese. The basin, in the lower part, looks like a very protruding turned and shaped cup.
In the eighteenth century the stoup reached its maximum artistic development, through elements modeled and painted in monochrome or bright polychrome. The devotional saints that are most found there are the Virgin, Saint Anthony of Padua, Saint James the Greater, the Child Jesus, Saint John of God, the face of Christ, Saint Francis of Paola, the Guardian Angel. Since the late seventeenth century, when the confraternity of the Immaculate Conception was founded in the Oratory of the PP. Conventuals of San Francesco, in Caltagirone there is a strong devotional growth towards the Madonna, also expressed in the objects of common use produced by the master craftsmen of the cannatari, incorporated into the aforementioned brotherhood. Plates, quarts, fruit bowls and holy water fonts almost always show the image of the Madonna.
The popular stoups of the late eighteenth century frequently resemble those rich and sumptuous baskets of sweet pastry, which are used to be made at Easter celebrations for the delight of children.