Knock Knock Knock
Iron Guardians from the Cesati Collection

The exhibition continues a path of exploration that has always characterised the cultural projects of Franco Maria Ricci, whose erudite, passionate, and insatiably curious gaze never hesitated to seek out beauty even in the less-trodden realms of art and craftsmanship.

Iron doorknockers are a superb example of this: far from being mere utilitarian items, the pieces on display represent an iconographic and anthropological heritage of rare fascination. Crafted primarily in Italy and Spain — but also in France, Austria, and Germany — these figurative knockers showcase an astonishing variety of forms: dragons, serpents, lions, human faces, vegetal motifs, full-bodied figures, or minimalist details rendered with grace and expressive strength. These creatures served not merely as decoration or mechanisms, but rather as expressions of the very “soul of the House”: places to be protected, guarded by a genius loci in animal or anthropomorphic form, often rooted in pre-Christian symbology.

The Cesati Collection is distinguished by the extremely high quality of its pieces (selected with passion and precision from the 1970s to the present) each capable of embodying an autonomous and deeply evocative visual language. Knock Knock Knock marks the first public exhibition in Italy of this extraordinary ensemble, preserved by one of the most authoritative families in the European antiques world.

Thanks to the exhibition design curated by Maddalena Casalis and Elisa Rizzardi, the sixty-five knockers will be presented in their most ‘dynamic’ state, aiming to reveal their minute wonders (fangs, feathers, muscles, gazes…) and to recapture the subtle thrill that arose from the act of knocking: the moment when grasping the knocker, one suddenly discerned its most refined and unexpected details.

An unprecedented cabinet of curiosities, rich in meaning: through the texts by Stefano Salis, which accompany the exhibition, the concepts of “physical threshold” and “symbolic threshold” are explored: themes more relevant than ever, which find an ideal counterpart in the Labirinto itself, a place that has always embodied the passage between inner and outer worlds.
A suggestion amplified by the images of doors, gates, and thresholds captured by photographer Massimo Listri, whose silent and contemplative compositions portray architecture as both a mental and emotional experience.

On the occasion of the exhibition, a namesake volume will be published by Franco Maria Ricci Editore, featuring texts by Stefano Salis and Carlo Donà.