L’Archivio Digitale del Volto Santo (ARVO) come modello di ricerca multidisciplinare, in Archivi tra didattica e pastorale: Orientamenti ed esperienze

ARVO is an acronym coined in 2013 to indicate the Digital Archive of the Volto Santo of Lucca. It is an ever-expanding tool that pursues the collection, progressive cataloguing and publication of material produced on the Volto Santo (Holy Face) of Lucca regarding its historical dimension, legend and cult. Not just an archive, however, ARVO is also an integral research project that stems from an idea that is becoming increasingly widespread in the field of the humanities, and which, although with some delay, is also gaining ground in Italy: that of knowledge sharing. ARVO finds its reason for being precisely in the principle of collective research, dissemination and the idea of Open Access, a protocol adhered to by a growing number of cultural organisations across various fields of knowledge. In other words, ARVO is an open-access archive that researchers, students, scholars, enthusiasts, educational institutions and even travellers following the leading thread of cultural or religious tourism can use. Due to its distinctly project-oriented nature, ARVO is also a promoter of research, to the extent that, precisely because of its activities, a forgotten musical comedy on the Volto Santo, Il Calzare d’Argento, composed by Ildebrando Pizzetti based on a libretto by Riccardo Bacchelli, was unearthed. It was performed at La Scala Theatre in Milan on 23 March 1961 and thanks to ARVO’s tools can now be heard again. Again thanks to ARVO, images of the frescoes (c. 1580) decorating the walls of the chapel of Villa Buonvisi in Monte San Quirico - the only surviving complete cycle recounting the legend of the Volto Santo - can be enjoyed.