Luca Trazzi’s “Graffito di Luce” pays tribute to Bramante and Renaissance symbolism, creating a luminous bridge between the past and present
The installation will be on display in the small cloister of the Santa Maria delle Grazie complex, exceptionally open to the public, and in the adjacent sacristy of the church
From April 6th to 13th, the “Graffito di Luce” installation by architect and designer Luca Trazzi will be showcased in the small cloister and the sacristy of Santa Maria delle Grazie. Created in collaboration with FAN Europe Lighting, an Italian company that has been operating in the technical and decorative lighting industry for over twenty years, the installation continues Trazzi’s previous works for Santa Maria delle Grazie, including the lighting design that enhances the Renaissance architecture housing the famous Leonardo’s Last Supper at night.
With a synthetic approach, Trazzi has reassembled the key elements of the small cloister, which is being opened to the public for the first time, and the sacristy (constructed between 1492 and 1497 and attributed to Urbino’s Donato Bramante), identifying a decorative floral-themed graffiti in the cloister’s plasterwork and making it the central element of the luminous installation.
Inspired by the wall ornamentation that once enlivened the architectural composition of the cloister, the lamps feature a light, rounded, radial structure that brings warmth to otherwise shadowed spaces, creating three luminous paths: circular in the arcade, star-shaped in the garden, and linear in the sacristy adjacent to the apse of the church.
The arrangement of anodized gold-colored aluminum wires around a tall stem, with terminations evoking the small flowers in the graffiti, characterizes the floor lamps placed in the four flowerbeds of the inner garden and in the Bramantesque sacristy.
Eight lamps, with thirty-two rays, are positioned in the garden and the sacristy. The number eight (and its multiples) is a clear homage to Bramante, who celebrated this number along with the twelve apostles and the four evangelists in the tribune of Santa Maria delle Grazie. In Christian tradition, the number eight is not only a symbol of infinity but is also associated with the eighth day—dedicated to the Resurrection and the New Man, as seen in octagonal baptisteries—and later to the Immaculate Conception, proclaimed as a dogma in 1854.
The idea of using this number with such strong symbolic significance thus unites Trazzi’s installation project with Bramante’s architectural design.
Just as the daylight from the Sapienza falls from above to illuminate the thoughts of the Dominican friars as they walk beneath the cloister’s loggia, this installation illuminates and accompanies the evening meditation, transforming the spaces into a luminous theater, where plays of light and shadow are cast through the columns, tombstones, the foliage of the majestic magnolias in the cloister, and the inlaid furnishings of the sacristy donated to the friars by Ludovico il Moro.
At the center of the cloister garden, a true miniature Eden, there is a fountain: in the basin, decorated along the circular edge with four bronze frogs stilled in their croaking by the water jets, a tall column of light rises upward, expanding like an umbrella and perfectly integrating into the symbolic context. The Tree of Life, the source of living water, the font of light, is a visual metaphor for a pair of sweetly cadenced Dominican Marian litanies: “Santa Maria, source of true wisdom,” “Santa Maria, light of right knowledge.”
This luminous source, the pulsing heart of the cloister, anticipates the straight path leading to the sacristy, marked by two opposing parallel rows of floor lamps.
A recognizable feature of the installation is the elegance, the playful nature of the forms, and the gentle emotional impact that never veers into provocation but offers a personal and respectful interpretation of the space.
Giansandro Cantori publisher and editor in chief
Graffito di Luce
Cloister and Sacristy of Bramante
Santa Maria delle Grazie
Via Caradosso, 1, Milan
From April 6th to 13th, from 10:00 AM to 10:30 PM
Free entry
Opening on invitation, Wednesday, April 9th, from 6:00 PM
