Shrines: Images of Italian Worship

Steven Rothfeld, the photographer for Frances Mayes’s bestseller Bringing Tuscany Home, has traveled the world collecting images of beauty, culture, and passion with his camera. He now focuses on an unusual and stirring art form in this stunning album of handcrafted shrines found throughout the Italian countryside.

Rothfeld turns his lens on a fascinating aspect of Italian culture, the age-old, popular art of building shrines in honor of the Virgin Mary and other saints. Created by average people as an expression of religious devotion, the shrines appear along ordinary roads in villages and cities, in the fields of farmers, and in the yards of simple cottages and homes. In Shrines, the full-color photographs of these ubiquitous, delicately crafted structures form a spiritual journey, bringing to life an ancient religious tradition that continues to thrive today. With a charming introduction and text by Frances Mayes, this visual tour of the surprising and graceful ways the divine touches and enriches everyday lives is perfect for admirers of sacred art, history buffs, those millions of Americans who travel to Italy, and everyone who dreams of going there.