Café Rosatti, Rome, Italy
Date1986, printed c. 2002
Artist
Ralph Gibson
(American photographer, born 1939)
MediumChromogenic color print
Dimensionsimage: 18 × 12 in. (45.7 × 30.5 cm)
sheet: 20 × 15 15/16 in. (50.8 × 40.5 cm)
sheet: 20 × 15 15/16 in. (50.8 × 40.5 cm)
Credit LineGift of Daniel Calacci, 2003
Object number2003-30.8
On View
Not on viewClassificationsPHOTOGRAPH
Label TextBread and wine were the two elements chosen to represent the body and blood of Christ. One theory for their selection is that they both require the intervention of a magical force (fermentation) to come into being in the same way that belief in Christ offered a new life. When Spanish priests traveling with Columbus reached the New World, they planted wheat for bread and grapes for wine, but neither crop survived in the Caribbean climate. They began to wonder if they were in God's world, or in a world created by the devil. They could not comprehend a land that could not produce bread or wine, and for years the Church argued the origin of the Americas. Five hundred years later, America is the world's bread basket and is producing some of the finest wines on the planet--whether the inhabitants are all children of God or the devil is yet to be determined.
—Burt Wolf
