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The ancient rituals related to the idea of the afterlife constitute a fascinating yet mysterious field to explore. Antiquity offers the opportunity to reflect on different views of death, or on what the afterlife can offer. Depicted or sculpted doors in antiquity had the purpose of faking a larger space in houses but into tombs. The souls of dead Egyptians would pass through and take a boat. Etruscans and local populations of central Italy would banquet or wait for their guardians to open them. However, dying was not the same affair for everyone.

"Opening the secret double doors"

Some of the earliest false doors in tombs date back to ancient Egypt. Once the soul passed through them, Ra himself would introduce the dead person to "the heavenly conclaves" (E. Brovarski, The Doors of Heaven, 1977, p. 110) by floating it on his boat. When Osiris appeared as the god of death, he only would open or close the doors. His judgment ( Psychostasia or weighing of the soul) influenced the boat trip. The false doors were monumental and enriched with reliefs with spells and wishes for the soul. Each element had a specific role in the opening or closing. For instance, the leaves were the main barrier between the two worlds. The name of the deceased was repeated so the soul would not be exiled (as in the false door of Wd´-Dri, Cairo Museum). Moreover, these thresholds were not only exclusive for kings or pharaohs but also for other important people ( pictures 1-2). The tomb of Mereruka, a powerful officer, preserves a statue of the dead passing through the false door.

Etruscan demons: defending the afterlife with swords and wings

For the Etruscans (9 th century B.C., central Italy) rituals were essential, especially the cult of death. Since the 7 th century B.C., they built a necropolis (towns of the dead). Burials looked like houses for the afterlife, plenty of lavish frescoes with pleasant and colorful life scenes. Depicted doors connected to the afterlife, guarded by demons. They had wings, their skin was livid blue, and their characters monstrous. They brought swords or axes and took (courteously or not) the dead to the afterlife. The feminine demons were Vanth ( François Tomb, half of 4 th century B.C., Necropolis of Vulci) and Scilla (Tomb of The Winged Demons, 2 nd half of the 3 rd century B.C., Necropolis of Sovana), the male Charun (Tomb of Charun, 250-275 B.C., Necropolis of Monterozzi, Tarquinia). As death constituted a sad a traumatic event, Etruscans relied on demons and depicted colorful decorations to exorcise this emotional bearing.

The cult of the dead in the woods: ancient Central Italy and doors made of stone

Into the woods of the Amplero Valley - Abruzzo region (Italy) - Cantone necropolis (1st-century B.C.-1st century A.C.) is a sudden ghastly yet sacred vision. About 50 tombs are the silent witnesses of the life of the Marsi, a community of Italic-Roman warriors who lived here since the 4th century B.C. (959 m.a.s.l.). There are different kinds of burials: fossa, chamber, and gravestones. Two steles imitate a door design borrowed by Romans: the door leaves have four areas, two bring half sphere ornaments, overcome by a stylised fronton. Nevertheless, in this necropolis rituals involved pouring libations into canals to the chamber tombs. Rich goods accompanied the noteworthy members of the community to the afterlife (i.e. ivory beds). These false doors prove that here death was acknowledged as a transition, influenced by Romans and Etruscan. Convivial rituals intensified the passage, wishing an enjoyable afterlife to the dead.

Our afterlife doors

The door as a symbol of transition from the corporal state to a different state - or from the realm of life to a different dimension where to stay - is one of the most ancient and used features. The use of the fake, depicted, sculpted door in antiquity can be easily found also in our times. It only takes a walk into a cemetery. Gates of monumental tombs, like in the Staglieno Cemetery (Genoa) or in the Verano Cemetery (Rome) are only a few examples of this heritage. Death is still seen as a passage to nowhere and our graveyards constitute the legacy of ancient necropolis: the only difference is that sometimes the modern chapels consent to cross the threshold and there are no guardians to keep us inside.

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At the doors of the Afterlife | Art thresholds and the perception of death - Hypercritic

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Depicted or sculpted doors in antiquity had the purpose of faking a larger space in houses. What was their role in tombs?

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Eggs have become an icon of Easter celebrations in the Western world. Painted and decorated, they represent the joy of spring and the rebirth of nature. But their history has its roots in more distant lands, as a symbol of the creation of the world. A concept that has evolved and adapted in different cultures, all the way to Christianity. Art is the most powerful medium through which stories interweave and propagate themselves, all the way to contemporary times.

The symbolic power of the egg in the myth of creation

The egg has been a recurring figure in the cosmogonic myths of ancient civilisations throughout the world. In Mesopotamian and Mediterranean cultures, the egg intertwines with the fertility goddess, symbolising the generative principle of life. In Greek myth, for example, the egg incarnates the embryo from which the entire universe was born. The Earth Goddess, Gaia, emerged from this egg, bringing with her the entire Olympian pantheon.

In Eastern cultures, often the cosmic egg has an association with the creation of the world and the birth of the gods. In Chinese myth, there is a legend about an egg from which emerged Yin and Yang, the fundamental principles of cosmic duality. According to ancient Egyptian civilisations, on the other hand, the sun god Ra, in some versions of the myth, emerged from an egg laid in the primordial ocean. Also for Native Americans, such as the Navajo, the egg represents the source of life and the creative force of the cosmos.

An offering for the afterlife: Eggs as symbols of rebirth and immortality

Eggs were often funerary objects in various ancient cultures, symbolising rebirth and life after death. In ancient Egypt, eggs were sometimes laid in tombs as offerings to grant the body life in the afterlife. The same happened in some Asian and Mediterranean cultures. This use of eggs reflected the universal conception of life as an endless cycle that goes beyond death.

This terracotta vase (c. 400 BC) is a typical funerary vase whose shape resembles an egg. Found in a tomb near Athens, it depicts the abduction of a woman, often identified as Helen of Troy.

Leda and the swan: the birth of Castor and Pollux, Clytemnestra and Helen

According to Greek mythology, Leda, queen of Sparta, laid eggs from which two pairs of twins were born. From one egg came the Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, and from the other Clytemnestra and Helen. This birth occurred after Zeus, as a swan, joined Leda, who on the same night also joined her husband, Tindarus. In the most common versions of the story, only Helen and Pollux are children of Zeus. There are several versions of the myth of Leda and the Swan, but what is certain is that it symbolises the mingling of the divine and the human. The descendants of this union play prominent roles in Greek mythological narrative, embodying values of courage, beauty and fate.

Sacred Art: From Medieval Symbols to a Renaissance Vision

Hildegard of Bingen and her mystical visions

In the Christian context, the egg has taken on different shades of meaning. During the Middle Ages, the egg represents the empty tomb of Christ, indicating the resurrection and eternal life. This concept relates to the practice of giving eggs as gifts during Easter, celebrating Christ's victory over death. One of the most important figures in Christian theology was the German nun and mystic Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179). She transfigured the concept of the cosmic egg in one of her most famous writings, the Scivias, from the Latin Sci vias Domini, meaning know the ways of the Lord.

In the manuscript's preface, the nun explains how she was induced by God to write about the 26 visions she had during her mystical experiences. In the third vision, entitled God, Cosmos and Humanity, she also adds to the explanation a drawing of the universe as an egg. According to the nun, man and the cosmos are both composed of the four elements. Air, earth, fire and water are thus placed at the basis of the generation of the whole, hence the reference to the egg, which embodies fertility.

Piero della Francesca

The Montefeltro Altarpiece is a Renaissance work that Piero della Francesca created between 1472 and 1474 and is also known as the Madonna della Misericordia. This masterpiece lies in the church of San Bernardino in Urbino. It was commissioned by the painter Federico da Montefeltro, thought to be for funerary purposes. The painting features the image of an egg as well.

The light, one of the characteristics of Piero della Francesca's art, delicately and uniformly illuminates the figures. This gives them an apparent three-dimensionality and creates a mystical and sacred atmosphere. The delicate tones and soft colours convey a sense of serenity and transcendence.

The work is significant for its symbolic and allegorical value. It represents the divine protection and mercy of the Madonna towards the Montefeltro family, who dominated Urbino during the Renaissance. The presence of saints, including St. John the Baptist and St. Jerome, surrounding the Virgin from the left, emphasises the religiousness and devotion of the family. The sleeping child alludes to motherhood and death at the same time. This element reinforces the hypothesis that the work was for the family tomb.

The Herald of Faith: why the egg does not cast a shadow?

The ostrich egg, located in the upper part of the painting, has very strong symbolism on several fronts. The ostrich was in fact the heraldic emblem of the Montefeltro family. Its position indicates faith is always placed above reason. The shell from which it hangs recalls the myth of Venus, as painted for example by Botticelli. In the Christian reinterpretation, in this case, she embodies the Virgin, at the centre of the work. It is no coincidence that by referring to Mary, the egg is also a symbol of purity. A peculiarity is that although the light falls directly on it, the egg does not cast a shadow.

The egg dance: spring within a game

Transcending the cultural boundaries of ancient civilisations, nature has always expressed its sense of rebirth through spring. It is still celebrated today on the day of the equinox. The term, derived from the Latin ' aequa nox ', refers to the moment when day and night are the same length. During the Renaissance, it was customary to celebrate this day with the . The dance, of Saxon origin (5th century Germany), involved an intricate play of movements. Regardless of the specific version, the aim was always the same: not to break the eggs by moving them or covering them with a bowl, using only the feet.

This tradition spread in many variants in different parts of Europe and, although it may seem to be a popular practice, there are testimonies that indicate its practice even among the nobility as a pre-wedding dance. The painting by the Dutch painter Pieter Aertsen depicts this playful moment taking place inside a brothel.

History of a lucky ritual

An article in the American Magazine of 1895 reported on this custom during the wedding of Margaret of Austria and Philibert of Savoy, which took place on Easter Monday 1498. It was thanks to this event that the egg dance became an Easter tradition. In pre-wedding tradition, the betrothed couple had to dance on ground covered with eggs and only if they managed not to break a single one would their marriage be lucky. Margaret and Philibert were an exception, as although they completed the dance, the Duchess became widowed three years after the wedding.

Ukrainian pysanky and the legendary Fabergé eggs

The Ukrainian tradition of decorating pysanky eggs dates back about 2000 years. These works of art come to life by using a wax and dye technique. In the beginning, pysanky had ritual and symbolic meanings, linked to fertility, protection and rebirth. Over time, they became distinctive artistic expressions of Ukrainian culture. Each design and colour tells a unique story, passing on traditions and beliefs through generations. Today, pysanky receives appreciation worldwide for its intricate beauty and its connection to Ukrainian history and culture, which is why there is a dedicated museum in the city of Kolomyia. The Pysanka Museum, not by chance in the shape of an egg, was built in 1987 and to date contains more than 10,000 decorated eggs from not only Eastern Europe but from all over the world.

The golden hands of Fabergé

Again in Eastern Europe, this time in Russia, the egg becomes a precious jewel in the hands of an incredible goldsmith. Fabergé eggs are world-famous jewels, symbols of luxury and craftsmanship. Their story begins in the 19th century, with Russian jeweller Peter Carl Fabergé. Tsar Alexander III asked him to create an Easter gift for his wife, Empress Maria Feodorovna. This first egg aroused so much interest that Fabergé continued to create one each year for the Tsar. Later, other aristocratic families also began to commission them. Each egg was unique, with elaborate designs and intricate surprises inside, such as miniatures of palaces, carriages and animals.

Fabergé egg production continued until 1917 when the Russian Revolution ended the monarchy. Many of the eggs were dispersed or sold during that tumultuous period. However, their charm and artistic value remained intact over time.

Today, Fabergé eggs have become treasures of jewellery art and are exhibited in museums and private collections all over the world. Each piece represents not only excellent craftsmanship but also a chapter in Russian imperial history and 19th-century decorative art. This is an egg that Tsar Nicholas II gave to his wife Aleksandra on the occasion of Easter in 1907.

The 'Easter Egg' and its evolution in popular culture

The term ' easter egg' was coined in computer science in 1979 by one of the developers of Atari Inc., the US company that created the first action-adventure video game Adventure. Warren Robinett, the game's creator, hid his signature in the video game to free himself from the anonymity imposed by the company. The director of software development, Steve Wright, appreciated Robinett's creativity and therefore proposed to include a surprise to be found in each video game that would further stimulate users' interest.

The decision to call these surprises 'easter eggs' descended from the traditional Easter eggs that used to be hidden in England during a children's treasure hunt. These surprises in the software were not documented and were not part of the core functionality of the programme. Over time, they became an artistic signature for the developers, adding a touch of fun and mystery to their creations. Often secrets came up only through specific actions or key combinations.

Leonardo Da Vinci's secrets

Although the term easter egg was thus defined only a few decades ago, there are many hidden references in the art world, such as self-portraits and secret symbolism that only surfaced after years, if not centuries, of study. Leonardo da Vinci is the master of coded messages, his art conceals many mysteries that are still waiting to emerge. For example, according to many critics, in the Adoration of the Magi, a work left unfinished, Leonardo hides a youthful self-portrait of himself in the child on the right margin of the work. Returning to the Easter theme, there are two trees that are part of the painting, a laurel tree as a symbol of the resurrection and a palm tree to indicate the passion of Christ.

A game of hide-and-seek with Disney

The concept of the easter egg has also evolved in the film industry, in particular in sagas such as the Marvel sagas, and in the productions of animation Colossus, Disney. In many films, there are homages, even artistic ones, quotations and cameos that only the most scrupulous observers have been able to recognise. For instance, in The Little Mermaid (1989), a painting now exhibited in the Louvre appears, namely Madeleine à la veilleuse (1644 c), by Georges de La Tour.

Some of the most known self-celebrations are the cups from Beauty and the Beast (1991) in Tarzan (1999), or Rapunzel (2010) attending Anna's wedding in the first chapter of the Frozen saga (2013); in a nutshell, a way for Disney to thank its followers by self-celebrating its greatest successes.

Art has always had the ability to decline in different forms: today, the Easter egg has also taken on commercial meanings, becoming a symbol of the Easter festivities, in particular for children who can't wait to unwrap their Easter eggs and find a surprise in them. However, it still retains a deep symbolic meaning of rebirth, hope and new life, linking ancient traditions with the contemporary.

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The egg through art: from cosmogony to Easter | Hypercritic

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Art narrates the evolution of the egg from a cosmic symbol for ancient cultures to an element of rebirth in Easter celebrations.

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The Stefaneschi Triptych gathers two different stories - Hypercritic

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Giotto di Bondone’s Stefaneschi Triptych creates a relation between art, life, and reality, bringing to a loop, creating a metanarrative form.

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Location of the visited exhibition

The entire heavenly court's glances seem to cross over each other when one goes into the Sala delle Balestre (or the Sala del Mappamondo) inside the Palazzo Pubblico in , beyond an imaginary window as big as the whole wall. The of Simone Martini records and portrays a quiet conversation between the saints and the Virgin Mary, through scrolls and phrases engraved in gold on marble.

Seeking dialogue with everybody

Over the centuries the phrases have all vanished, apart from two rhyming excerpts. These are sentences that the commissioners wanted Our Lady to address to the audience in person. Italian-speaking visitors will have no problem reading and understanding Mary. In fact, she does not speak Latin, but the everyday Italian of the Sienese people at the beginning of the 14th century. Just this detail alone reveals that this is a very different work from another Majesty. It is the one by Duccio di Buoninsegna, on the central altar of the Cathedral of Siena from 1311 onwards. Duccio had represented a divine court, gilded, distant from the faithful, and put there for the purpose of silent adoration.
In the Majesty of Simone Martini, Mary and the saints talk so that everyone can understand. They seek dialogue and contact with the faithful, but above all, with citizens.

An ethical and political warning

Mary's words are an ethical, civic, and political warning. Assembled on a throne that appears to be the work of French Gothic goldsmithery, enriched by gold leaf, decorated glass inserts, and pearls, the Virgin addresses two rhymed sentences to her audience.

Simone Martini completed the Majesty by June 1315 but later returned to amend his fresco in 1321. The first sentence is in the lower frame and dates back to 1315. It is a promise of blessing to all citizens, except for those who victimize the weak. This warning is a hidden political declaration of the Rule of the Nine, the oligarchy that governed Siena. In those very years, the Nine had entrusted the Captain of the People with the task of protecting the poor and oppressed. It is his seal which is present at the base of the Majesty.

Image courtesy of carulmare, via Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons

Admonishing the conspirators

The second sentence that Our Lady pronounces appears on the black step that lies between the two central angels. Here, Mary issues a warning to anybody who acts in their own interests rather than that of the community. These rhymes share some words with Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. However, they come from the Paradise, a canto that he hadn't composed yet in 1315. Recent restorations have shown how when Simone Martini returned to add modifications to the work in 1321, he added this second sentence. This further modification had hence political reasons. The Nine claimed it after the Carnaioli Conspiracy broke out in the city in 1318, putting the oligarchy to the test. The rulers brutally put down the conspiracy. Therefore, in apparent recognition of the Nine's power, the Mother of God admonished the conspirators.

Blue irises and parchment sheets

The work is a Gothic masterpiece in which Simone Martini reinterprets the novelties of Giotto di Bordone and combines them with the Sienese taste, similar to the French style. Among the many fresco innovations, there is the first representation of blue irises in Italian painting history. Then, for the sake of pure realism, Simone inserts real parchment sheets onto the plaster of the fresco for the first time. One is the scroll in the hand of the child Jesus, and the other the book that St. Jerome is writing, represented in the second round of the frame at the bottom left.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons / Public domain.

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The Majesty of Simone Martini in Siena - Hypercritic

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Location of the visited exhibition The entire heavenly court's glances seem to cross over each other when one goes into the Sala delle Balestre (or the Sala del Mappamondo) inside the Palazzo Pubblico in , beyond an imaginary window as big as the whole wall.

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Location of the visited exhibition

Real lessons in civic education are hosted on the walls of a small room in the Italian city of Siena. The Salon of Nine, Siena's dominant government from 1287 to 1355, used to meet here. It's also the location for Ambrogio Lorenzetti's The Allegory of Good and Bad Government. A work of art that comes with a didactic aim.

In fact, it doesn't feature a single figure without an explanation of their identity underneath. Tyranny sits on the throne of the Bad Government, flanked by Greed, Pride, and Vainglory. At their feet lies Justice, tied up and abused. Violence has devastated the landscape surrounding the scene: the city is crumbling, and war rages beyond the walls. On the other hand, the Good Government seats the Township on its throne. Close by are the cardinals and theological Virtues. The city's effects are those guaranteed by an ideal administration: buildings under construction, a teacher with a class of children, and a carol of women in revelry.

The Sienese style

In the first half of the 1300s, Siena was the beating heart of the Italian Gothic. The Lorenzetti brothers (Pietro and Ambrogio), along with Simone Martini, are the founders of a painting style that would have a historical impact on Italian art in the following decades, through to the late 1400s.

The exquisite Sienese style inherits an important trait from the cycle of Assisi frescoes by Giotto (and his school). It is the realistic representation of the everyday. This characteristic reveals the artist's intent to make these painted stories more concrete, allowing the public to identify better. Today, we would call it an "immersive experience."

This is the great power of The Allegory of Good and Bad Government. Through examples taken from everyday life, recognizable to its entire audience, it produces an effective declaration of political and didactic intent.

Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain

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The Allegory of Good and Bad Government has a didactic aim - Hypercritic

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Location of the visited exhibition Real lessons in civic education are hosted on the walls of a small room in the Italian city of Siena. The Salon of Nine, Siena's dominant government from 1287 to 1355, used to meet here. It's also the location for Ambrogio Lorenzetti's The Allegory of Good and Bad Government.

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In the latter half of the 14th century, the masters of much of Florentine art were the Di Cione brothers, Jacopo, Matteo, Nardo and Andrea. The Crucifixion by Jacopo di Cione - also known as Robiccia - and his workshop is a small-sized fixed altarpiece with provenance from Florence, which is currently on display at the National Gallery in London. The artwork dates back to 1369-1370 and it is one of the finest examples of Florentine Gothic art of the late 1300s.

A medieval colourful painting

The artwork presents depicted parts as well as a precious frame, gilded and unique of its kind.
On the central panel, the scene of the Crucifixion is colorful and lively. Its many concurrences lend the panel a strong narrative nature, in contrast with the lateral full-length standing saint figures. On the left-hand side, there is Saint John the Baptist and Saint Paul, while on the right are Saint James the Greater and Saint Bartholomew. The predella, the lower part, in a single wooden panel, presents five figures depicted in five medallions. The central roundel features the Virgin with the Infant Christ. Saint Anthony the Abbot and Saint Catherine appear on the right. On the left Saint Bernard holds an open book along with an unidentified female saint.

A unique frame

The altarpiece also presents a precious Gothic frame, with a bright gilding - unique of its kind - eight coats of arms and seven domes on the top with starred ceilings and a vault cross, a detail that the viewer can only spot if looking at the painting upside down or while on their knees. The original function was contemplative and intimate devotion, and given its small dimensions, all the details visible only when seen from close up.

Provenance: the nunnery hypothesis

There are still gaps in the history of this artwork, but hypotheses and certain facts too. The Crucifixion probably originally belonged to a Florentine nunnery. Perhaps it was the convent of Santa Maria Maddalena di Castello (de'Pazzi), dependent on the Cistercian abbey of Settimo. Given its compact format, presumably, it was originally placed on a small altar. The coats of arms on the two lateral pillars would suggest that the panel protruded out of a niche wall, while the image could have been the object of intimate adoration, more likely placed on altars in the nunnery dormitory. In the 15th century, the decorative program changed as Castello needed to show its power within the town of Florence. At that time, the Crucifixion perhaps was on the altar of Saint Bernard and Saint Benedict, and eventually removed when the nuns moved to San Donato a Torre (around 1442).

The British collections

In a sale by Christie's auctioneers in 1822 the painting was bought by the owner of Fonthill Abbey in England, until it was acquired by the National Gallery in 1896. Fonthill Abbey in Wiltshire was the extravagant and magnificent mansion of William Beckford (1760-1844) - a famous art collector, writer and politician with a taste in Gothic romanticism. This was definitely the perfect place to hang the Crucifixion. The images that survived show that the artwork would perfectly match the dramatic architecture in the Gothic Revival style of the building and the interiors dominated by gilt and crimson. Indeed, in Rutter's description of Fonthill Abbey (1822), the Crucifixion was hung in the Lancaster, or State Bedroom showing Beckford's innovative taste for early Italian pictures.

Function and aesthetic influence

Originally the value of this work was connected to its devotional function and to the precious material features. After Beckford acquired it, its value increased: the original function and the provenance from Italy dignified Beckford's lineage, while Gothic aesthetics played an influential role within one of the most significant early Gothic revival contexts.

The verticality

In the centre of the scene, Christ is portrayed in all his suffering. The Virgin is fainting at the foot of the Cross with St. John the Evangelist and two groups of people. On the left side are the soldiers casting lots, the sponge-bearer, the group of Marys with Magdalene and the Good Thief. On the right there are the Bad Thief, the soldier who is beating his legs and the spear-bearer. At first sight, the focal point of the painting proves difficult to distinguish. Indeed, the lively interactions create a dramatic scenery, giving the impression of a religious play. Multiple features stress the verticality of this artwork. First of all there are the soldiers' multiple lances and the poles of the high crosses, then the Virgin with the Infant Christ, who is vertically linked to the desperate Virgin under the Cross.

The sinner look

One of the soldiers on horseback to the right is turning towards the viewer. He directs his gaze outside the picture: a sinner, who now attracts the attention of those standing at this altarpiece, who may be other sinners addressing their prayers to Christ. The most surprising aspect of the whole history of this painting is that such a rare specimen of art has survived until nowadays in excellent condition. Once, it was a point of reference in a nunnery and for sinners who empathized with Christ and prayed to him. Nowadays, the viewer admires it for its beauty and uniqueness at the National Gallery. The beauty and the preciousness of its materials made it a cult object in the 19th century, changing its function. Originally the means to a spiritual purpose, the Crucifixion was reused and revalued more for its aesthetics than for its religious aspects.

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The Crucifixion by Jacopo di Cione | Adventures of a medieval painting - Hypercritic

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In the latter half of the 14th century, the masters of much of Florentine art were the Di Cione brothers, Jacopo, Matteo, Nardo and Andrea. The Crucifixion by Jacopo di Cione - also known as Robiccia - and his workshop is a small-sized fixed altarpiece with provenance from Florence, which is currently on display at the National Gallery in London.

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Location of the visited exhibition

's Madonna del Solletico (or Madonna and Child) is a wooden painted panel, done in 1426 for the private use of Cardinal Antonio Casini. It now hangs in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. On the back of the panel is represented the cardinal's coat of arms, which is considered reasonable proof of attribution. The work is small and presents a rare iconography, if not a unicum.

It is alleged that the golden background and Mary's serious face, which foresees her son's future, are just two canonical aspects of the representation. In that case, it is also true that the rest of the composition is curious. The work represents the passage to a new artistic period in which the sacred icon from the hieratic becomes human.

The Madonna is shown playing with her son in swaddling clothes. She tickles his face so much as to provoke a smile in the child. The gesture is natural, human, familiar and declares the study that Masaccio must have made to build the composition.

Image courtesy of Eugene a, via Wikimedia Commons/CC0

Children's Laughs

The Italian writer for children and theorist Gianni Rodari dedicates a chapter of Grammar of Fantasy to the theme of children's laughter.

Laughter can be of three different types. The laughter of superiority when the mother puts a teaspoon in the ear performing an action that the child knows is "wrong". This kind of laughter is linked to the concept of knowledge. The child knows very well that this is not how a teaspoon does. The laughter of aggression arises when the child tries to exorcise something that frightens.

And finally, the laughter of surprise when the child meets something pleasant and unexpected. This one is the laughter of Madonna del Solletico, where Jesus is taken by surprise by the unusual sensation he feels, perhaps for the first time, on his skin.

In Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie describes the first laughter in this way:

When the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.

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Madonna del Solletico | The magic of the first laughter - Hypercritic

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Location of the visited exhibition 's Madonna del Solletico (or Madonna and Child ) is a wooden painted panel, done in 1426 for the private use of Cardinal Antonio Casini. It now hangs in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. On the back of the panel is represented the cardinal's coat of arms, which is considered reasonable proof of attribution.

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Sano di Pietro’s Nativity of the Virgin | The Mary’s first day - Hypercritic

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Sano di Pietro’s Nativity of the Virgin for its adherence to the reality of everyday life seems to be a documentary narrative product.

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Location of the visited exhibition

The Triumph of Death was a widespread image starting from the late Middle Ages and has its origins in Franco-Germanic territory. Often connected to the Last Judgment theme, it carries a taste for the macabre that will characterize the years to follow, up until the Black Plague of 1348.

A recurring image

The work's location is the Abatellis Museum, in Palermo, Sicily. The painting belongs to a historical period that critics defined as International Gothic or court style. The majority of the fresco represents the same noble court. Death, embodied by a skeleton, rides astride an emaciated horse that tramples the lifeless bodies beneath it.

The scene's grim protagonist has just released an arrow at a young man (in the bottom right). Pierced through the neck, he falls to his knees. The arrow is particularly symbolic in this context. Since the classical age, artists have used it to represent the unleashing of a plague on the part of divinity. For this reason, San Sebastiano, who appears in this iconography, having survived the executioners' arrows, became one of the protecting saints against epidemics.

The didactic purpose

The Triumph of Death has a clear internal division, so much so as to be didactic. On the left, the author depicted a group of impoverished men and women, praying to Death to end their suffering. In the center, foreground lies the bodies of monks, nobles, and other members of the ecclesiastical orders. This shows Death does not make class distinctions.

Lastly, on the right, only the aristocrats near the center are upset by the macabre spectacle. Those towards the edges, on the opposite, appear either ignorant or serene, dedicated to their music and hunting. And yet Death is coming for them too.

Image courtesy of José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

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The Triumph of Death and its strong symbolism - Hypercritic

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Location of the visited exhibition The Triumph of Death was a widespread image starting from the late Middle Ages and has its origins in Franco-Germanic territory. Often connected to the Last Judgment theme, it carries a taste for the macabre that will characterize the years to follow, up until the Black Plague of 1348.

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Location of the visited exhibition

Material/Technique

The Loggia della Mercanzia, the original home of Saint Peter and Saint Paul'ssculptures, is nestled in the heart of Siena, at a crucial urban junction, and was concluded in 1445 to become the headquarters of the Arte della Mercanzia. This architecture, with its precious statues, was the city's first example of fully three-dimensional sculptures, autonomous from the structure that held them: a characteristic of the Renaissance taste that would progressively and systematically impose itself in the art world.

The five statues

The five statues on the pedestals (nowadays replaced with copies) are the work of Antonio Federighi (author specifically of Saint Savino, Saint Ansano, and Saint Vittore, three of the four patron Saints of Siena) and of Lorenzo di Pietro called Vecchietta (the author of Saint Peter and Saint Paul). The Loggia commissioned the statues of Saint Paul and Saint Ansano, and on the same day, they asked Donatello for a statue of Saint Bernardino, a work that he never realized.

Nevertheless, the potential presence of such a great master on the construction site sparked something in the two Sienese artists. For however much they had already established themselves, they didn't want Donatello to outclass them. For this reason, the duo took advantage of the opportunity of Saint Peter and Saint Paul to renew their style following the Renaissance's new standards.

A new style

Vecchietta's hand reveals his predilection for jewelry arts. In comparison to the works of his colleague Federighi, his statues are rounded, carefully designed down to the smallest details, like the decoration on the lower hems of the vests, or the calligraphic tufts of the beard, or still yet the ornaments on the cover of the book in Saint Peter 's hand, or the wrinkles on both Saints.

Moreover, both of their feet stick out from the pedestals by almost half a step, just like Donatello's statues and did in 1429, for the baptismal font of Siena. And below those feet, the name of Lorenzo di Pietro appears as the painter (OPVS. LAURENTII. PETRI. PI°TORIS. SENENSIS). This is a revelation of the artist's marketing strategy. Indeed, even in front of an esteemed sculpture of his making, he takes care to communicate to the public that he has the same abilities in painting as well.

Image courtesy of sailko via Wikimedia Commons

Image courtesy of sailko via Wikimedia Commons

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Saint Peter and Saint Paul | The new Renaissance standards - Hypercritic

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Location of the visited exhibition Material/Technique The Loggia della Mercanzia, the original home of Saint Peter and Saint Paul 'ssculptures, is nestled in the heart of Siena, at a crucial urban junction, and was concluded in 1445 to become the headquarters of the Arte della Mercanzia.

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San Girolamo (Saint Jerome) is the Doctor of the Church to whom we owe the first Latin translation of the entire Bible (Vulgate). Paintings usually show him in the act of writing, in front of a desk surrounded by books. Scholars have often noticed in this table that Saint Jerome does not have any typical element in representing a Saint. The traditional halo is the first visible lack.

A true intellectual

In comparison with the same subject in his master Colantonio's painting, Antonello da Messina clearly wanted to offer a different representation. This Saint Jerome looks to us as a scholar of his time, contributing to a new, lay iconography for humanist intellectuals. Another proof of this evolving sensibility is the contemporary production of portraits of the Lords of the time, as in the case of Federico da Montefeltro by Pedro Berruguete, who captures him immersed in the reading of a volume, as a true intellectual.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain.

Traditional and new iconography

But looking carefully at this painting, it is possible to recognize the saint and even confirm Saint Jerome's identity: behind his figure, on the bench, appears the red cardinal's hat, while on the right, in the shadows, a lion is approaching. The lion has always accompanied the Saint's representations because Jerome saved a wounded lion during his hermitage in the desert, and from that moment, the animal became his faithful companion.
Another clue that connects to the traditional iconography is the crucifix: Antonello used all his skills to paint it at the brush's tip in a perfect profile perspective, visible on the library's top left.

The setting

The scene's setting is also curious: the architectural interior looks in all respects like a church with vaults, capitals, and mullioned windows. But there is a wooden structure dedicated to the study in the center, with shelves full of books, a desk, and seating. These elements may underline how this Saint, inside the Catholic Church, dedicated himself to prayer through reason, the main virtue of the humanist era.

The two birds in the painting

Finally, to conclude the iconography on the threshold of the portal that introduces us to the scene, we see two birds: the partridge and the peacock.

Since the early Christians, the peacock has represented Christ because it personifies the virtues of immortality, kingship, and eternal glory. The partridge instead is an animal that connects to the specific iconography of Saint Jerome. In fact, in one of his writings, the Doctor of the Church uses the partridge and its habits of hatching other birds' eggs, as an allegory for all the fools who accumulate riches unjustly and vainly.

Homesick

The oeuvre also contains a detail related to its author: Antonello was an artist in love with his hometown in Sicily's Northeast corner, Messina. He gave up his brilliant career in the Veneto region and returned to Sicily.

His city's constant nostalgia is present in many works, which often show the Strait and Messina harbor in the background. Within this work, scholars have identified a panorama of Monte Santo di Camaro, a Messina's stream and neighborhood. This is the glimpse that one can see beyond the left window, in the table's background, where the hills' gentle curves still overlap Messina's current landscape.

Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain.

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Saint Jerome in his study | A new humanist iconography - Hypercritic

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San Girolamo (Saint Jerome) is the Doctor of the Church to whom we owe the first Latin translation of the entire Bible (Vulgate). Paintings usually show him in the act of writing, in front of a desk surrounded by books. Scholars have often noticed in this table that Saint Jerome does not have any typical element in representing a Saint.

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Vincenzo Foppa, the first artist and leader of the Lombard School (the group of artists that worked in the area of the Duchy of Milan), painted around 1480 this Madonna and Child. This painting, probably conceived for private devotion, exemplifies and summarises Foppa's style, marked by its solidity, light and volume.

Madonna and Child, Vincenzo Foppa, circa 1480, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Foppa's style: solidity, light, volume

Vincenzo was born in Brescia around 1430 and was one of the most important painters active in Lombardy before Leonardo da Vinci 's arrival in Milan in 1482. He trained in a courtly entourage that was still anchored to International Gothic, yet he managed to pioneer in a new style. He set the bases of a new way of painting that many other artists, such as Ambrogio da Fossano, also called Bergognone, would learn to use in the following decades.

The solidity and the volume of the bodies, the dour appearance of the flesh (as one can see in this Madonna), and particular attention to how the light hits the figures characterize Foppa's style.

Foppa's success: respect for tradition, innovative painting

One of the remarkable qualities of his art is that he was able to innovate while respecting canonical dictations. The Madonna and Child is one of the most common topics of the whole history of art, as private and public institutions often commissioned it. Yet Foppa, while even having to follow a very concrete structure and theme, created something new. This might be one of the reasons for his success: a canonical structure but an innovative way of painting. One can observe this in some important commissions such as the Pala Bottigella (1480-1484) or the (end of the 15th century), restored in 2017.

Pala Bottigella, Vincenzo Foppa, 1480-1484, Pinacoteca Malaspina, Pavia. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Pala della Mercanzia, Vincenzo Foppa, end of the 15th century, Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo, Brescia. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Foppa's most famous work is the Portinari Chapel in Milan (1462-1468), influenced by Tuscan architecture but painted in the realistic and solid new Lombard style.
Magister fecit: Bergognone follows Foppa

Bergognone, one generation younger than Vincenzo, grasped and poured into altarpieces and panels all of Foppa's innovations. A clear comparison can be made between Foppa's Madonna and Child (or the madonnas from the aforementioned altarpieces) and one of Bergognone's works (of the same topic) from the National Gallery, London.

Madonna and Child, Bergognone, 1488-1490, National Gallery, London. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

There is the same grey color to give tridimensionality to the figure, the same porcelain aspect of the skin, the same volume, the same light.

Foppa's style, solidity and volume in aeternum

Foppa's innovations went on to be the main characteristic of Lombard art for years and years. The darkness that he gave to his paintings, the lights, and the shadows are a leitmotiv of Milanese artists. These characteristics marked the end of the Quattrocento, the entire Cinquecento, of the 17th and 18th centuries in Northern Italy. Even Caravaggio was deeply impressed by the Lombard use of light, that he later adopted and developed.

Some post-Avant-garde paintings also show these typical Lombard features. The historiographical term "ritorno all'ordine", which can be translated as "return to order" is used to describe the style of the Novecento Group, founded in 1922 and theorized by Margherita Sarfatti. Some of the members were Mario Sironi, Achille Funi or Pietro Marussig. Their art can be linked to Foppa's style: grey shadows, dark paintings, and solid volumes. Some paintings by Sironi show it clearly, such as some portraits by Funi or Marussig.

Arturo Martini translated into sculpture what others had done on canvas or wood. The faces he created in terracotta are the same ones Foppa had painted five centuries before. This Maternity is one of the most explicit examples of the transposition of Vincenzo's style into tridimensionality:

Maternità, Arturo Martini, circa 1925, Museo della ceramica di Savona. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Foppa's innovations, despite being in demand from collectors and affected by frequent commissions, have remained and persisted over time. Light and shadow, volume and solidity have been for over five hundred years the most distinguishing characteristics of Lombard Art.

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Solidity, light, volume | Vincenzo Foppa's style persists over time - Hypercritic

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Vincenzo Foppa, the first artist and leader of the Lombard School (the group of artists that worked in the area of the Duchy of Milan), painted around 1480 this Madonna and Child. This painting, probably conceived for private devotion, exemplifies and summarises Foppa's style, marked by its solidity, light and volume.

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Location of the visited exhibition

The theme of Giovanni Bellini's Pesaro Altarpiece is the Coronation of the Virgin in the presence of Saints Peter, Paul, Jerome, and Francis. Executed sometime between 1471 to 1483, it is one of the best-known early oil paintings, and the panel's iconography symbolizes Mary's arrival before God's throne following her Assumption into heaven.

From an iconographic point of view, the panel adheres to the canonical representation. However, space and human figures stand out because of their organization and layout.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia / Public Domain

A kaleidoscopic effect

At the center stands a cornice guiding the viewer's eyes towards Christ and Mary, while at the same time revealing a landscape behind them. As the concept of landscape painting as an independent genre had not yet been fully realised, so Giovanni Bellini introduced it as a painting within a painting. The artist arranged the view of a castle on a hill in the panel's heart.

The central focus on architecture is not accidental. Several scholars have pointed out how the dominant positioning of the building could be linked to the artwork's commission. To date, the castle remains unidentified. However, the painter and commissioner undoubtedly wanted to emphasize its importance. The architecture serves as a background to the sacred event depicted within it, and also as the painted cornice's focal point. Its border echoes the frame of the work itself, which is still in its original state.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia / Public Domain.

Visual influence over time

The illusory game of the painting within the painting and the 'concentric frames' that Bellini uses to deceive the viewer are still effective today, thanks to the preservation of the original frame. It was not the first of Bellini's attempts to include the frame into the painting itself, thus tricking the viewer into a bright and immersive optical illusion. Another example is the San Giobbe Altarpiece in the Venetian church that goes by the same name. Here, the trompe-l'œil exploits the royal pilasters that frame the altarpiece. The painting fakes the opening of a niche where the Virgin sits on a throne surrounded by saints. In the Pesaro Altarpiece, the frames' enfilade creates a telescoping effect, a stunningly effective matryoshka of paintings.

The same kaleidoscopic-style as the 2003 music video Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes. Directed by the duo Alex Courtes and Martin Fougerol, it matches the rhythm's obsessive repetition with visual concentric shapes to generate an iconic loop.

The Seven Nation Army music video on YouTube.

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The Pesaro Altarpiece and the painting within a painting - Hypercritic

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Location of the visited exhibition The theme of Giovanni Bellini's Pesaro Altarpiece is the Coronation of the Virgin in the presence of Saints Peter, Paul, Jerome, and Francis. Executed sometime between 1471 to 1483, it is one of the best-known early oil paintings, and the panel's iconography symbolizes Mary's arrival before God's throne following her Assumption into heaven.

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The Birth of Venus and the iconic doll are two very different cultural objects. The former is a famous Renaissance painting created by Sandro Botticelli in the 15th century, depicting the goddess Venus, while Barbie is a popular line of dolls launched in 1959 by the Mattel production company. However, what Botticelli's Venus and Barbie have in common is the concept of idealised beauty. Both subjects become icons of beauty in their respective historical and cultural contexts. Indeed, Botticelli's Venus is often celebrated for her grace and aesthetic perfection, while Barbie was modelled with idealised physical features and body proportions that were considered perfect even if unrealistic. Both figures invite us to reflect on how ideas of beauty and the concept of femininity have evolved over the centuries, moving from classical aesthetics to modern pop culture influences.

Sandro Botticelli, one of the masters of the Italian Renaissance

Sandro Botticelli, whose real name was Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, was a famous 15th-century Italian painter, born in 1445 in Florence. He has been one of the great masters of the Italian Renaissance. The artist worked for various prominent figures of the time, including members of the Medici family. In spite of his talent and popularity, Botticelli fell into disgrace during his last years of life, when he was seized by a strong conversion and came very close to Savonarola 's theories: his artistic production was affected by this new view of the world, which was at times mystical and visionary. However, over time, his entire production has been re-evaluated and appreciated as a milestone of Renaissance art.

His influence is still evident in art history and his works are recognised and admired worldwide. Botticelli is famous for his depictions of mythological, religious and allegorical subjects. His paintings are characterised by the use of bright colours and elegant, graceful figures.

His most popular work is the Birth of Venus, a painting depicting the goddess Venus emerging from the foam of the sea, foam caused by Uranus' member falling into the water when he was emasculated by his son Saturn. The work may have been commissioned by the Medici family, one of the most influential families of the Italian Renaissance. Today, the painting location is in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence together with another famous work by the artist, The Spring.

The Birth of Venus, the creation of an icon

The Birth of Venus is a painting made by Botticelli around 1485-1486. This work depicts Venus, the goddess of love and beauty, landing on the island of Cyprus. The painting shows Venus, intent on covering her nudity with her long blond hair, surrounded by mythological figures. Her pose is delicate, as she is pushed on a shell towards the seashore by the Zephyrus wind. He embraces a female figure, perhaps identifiable with another wind such as the Bora. On the right instead, there is a nymph, representing the Hour of Spring, waiting to dress Venus in a mantle of flowers.

The composition, the delicate tones and the elegant movement of the figures give the painting a harmonious and dreamy atmosphere. The Birth of Venus is an iconic work of the Italian Renaissance and one of Botticelli's most famous masterpieces. For this aesthetically refined canvas, which recalls classical mythology, the artist depicts Venus with body proportions that reflect the ideal aesthetics of the Renaissance. The figure of Venus is slender and sinuous, following the aesthetic ideals of the time. However, the painting has some exceptions to the actual anatomical proportions. Venus' neck is elongated and slender, while her arms appear slightly lengthened.

The divine beauty of Venus, the proportions of a goddess's body

Botticelli transposed the aesthetic canons of 15th-century beauty onto canvas. They dealt with high foreheads, pale skin and a body with pronounced forms and abundant hips. Botticelli's Venus and the other female figures in his works such as The Spring (1482) and Portrait of a Young Woman (1480-14805) all embody the ideal of beauty that women sought to emulate. In creating his Venus, the painter took inspiration from the classical models of the ancient Greek statuary of Venus pudica and Anadiomene, whose poses and balanced forms he took up.

The first treatise on the proportions of the human anatomy, the Canon of Polyclitus, dates back to the classical period of Greek art. In 450 B.C., the Greek theorist Polyclitus began measuring various bodies of young people in order to search for the proportions of the human body. His goal was to create a human sculptural figure that was as close to reality as possible. He discovered that once the measurement of a finger or a head was established, all the remaining proportions of a figure could be calculated. From then on, the Canon became a reference model of ideal beauty in representations of human figures.

Barbie, the unrealistic proportions of a perfect body

In 1959, Mattel introduced Barbie to the international market. The lesson of Polyclitus is forgotten and, consequently, the harmonic relationships between the various parts of the body. The model of harmonious beauty of the classical Venus is surpassed and taken to exasperation by the modern Venus. Barbie, indeed, possesses unrealistic measurements with her neck, arms and waist disproportionate to the rest of her body parts. According to Focus, if Barbie really existed, she could not lift her head because of her too-thin neck. She could not even lift weights because of her very small wrists. Furthermore, her legs are twice as long as her arms and her small feet would force her to crawl instead of walk.

In 1992, the best-selling Barbie doll ever, Totally Hair Barbie, was released. The canon of beauty became an unattainable, almost virtual model, and for this reason, perhaps, so desired. Kilometre-long legs and tiny circumferences are what the society of those years demanded. Over time, Barbie adapted to changing generational tastes, and the following came to life: Barbie Petit, Barbie Tall and Barbie Curvy. The doll will therefore adopt more realistic sizes and hair with various hairstyles and colours than the canonical blonde hair. Another important innovation came when, in the 1980s, the first black Barbie was born, under the banner of a more inclusive canon of beauty.

Anatomical Venuses of the 18th century: macabre Barbies?

Intriguing, albeit macabre, life-sized antique 'dolls' were the anatomical wax Venuses of the 18th century. Medicine was in full development and the study of female anatomy through such models became widespread as the bodies could be opened and explored at will. These 'sleeping beauties' ( M. Sardina, Amedit 34, March 2018, pp. 26-29) were born in the second half of the century in France and England, created, among the first, by Guillaume Desnoues (1650-1735) and Abraham Chovet (1704-1790). In Italy, the 'enlightened pope' Benedict XIV (1675-1758) favoured the appearance of such sculptures, which were both gloomy and sensual. The waxworker Clemente Susini (1754-1814) distinguished himself by modelling the most important ones.

Venus-zombies: ambiguous beauty between Eros and Thanatos

Making these Venuses calls into question different types of knowledge and techniques, first and foremost ceroplasty. The lying young Venuses were naked, surrendering, similar to their Renaissance predecessors, apparently caught in the act of falling asleep. The removable parts open up revealing in layers the internal organs, right down to the womb, which often contained a foetus. Gestures and features inherit the sensuality of Giorgione's Venuses (1510) and Titian's (1538). The sinuosity recalls Botticelli's antecedents such as the Birth of Venus (1485) or the Hellenism of the Venus de' Medici (1st century BC)

The head of the anatomical Venus is reclined backwards, followed by the neck that draws an emphatic 'S' curve. On the face the eyes are half-open and the lips are barely parted. All the details contribute to an ambiguous image, oscillating between eros and death. One perceives an idea of passive beauty, which makes such sculptures more of 'zombie dolls' ( M. Sardina, Amedit 34, March 2018, pp. 26-29) than smiling Barbies.

Anatomical Ceroplastics: Medical Instruments from Votive Origins

The function of these perturbing Venuses was to study female anatomy. Anatomical parts had to be reproduced with precision. The ceroplasters therefore were highly skilled in their art, as well as careful connoisseurs of anatomy. The statues consisted of a metal core that supported all the other wax components. The eyes were made of glass, the hair was real. Susini's Venus de' Medici had a necklace made of real pearls that strategically covered the line of the neck, where the chest opened up. In history, anatomical waxwork has its roots in the ancient practice of ex-voto production. Since the classical era, anatomical ex-votos were in fact widespread, made of terracotta as well as wax and metal.

Barbie, the transformation of an icon through the generations

Put on the market on 9 March 1959 by Mattel, Barbie imposed herself in global iconography right from the start. She was born with a distinct identity, to the point of having a full name: Barbara Millicent Roberts. She went from being a toy to being a standard of beauty, of style. As a symbol that spans generations, the doll itself has evolved with the changing society. Over the years, Barbie dolls have been created to represent the most varied careers, even those furthest from the female canons, with different ethnicities, and above all different physical forms and abilities, in the name of inclusiveness, an essential value of today's society.

A constant that has always accompanied the figure of Barbie is Ken. He too underwent several transformations but always remained faithful to the figure of a character at Barbie's service. It's an avant-garde and feminist condition considering the times in which it was created (1961).

Margot Robbie, an imperfect Barbie in a perfect pink world

Barbie becomes flesh and blood for the first time with Greta Gerwig's live-action. The director, a multiple Oscar nominee, chooses Margot Robbie as the lead actress to bring the iconic doll to life. In Barbie's world, everything is pink and perfect, fake, except for the protagonist, who is considered less than perfect and therefore forced to embark on a journey into the real world, where she will have to live without her comforts. So much pink paint has been used to paint the set that the industry is in crisis worldwide. Moreover, the doll is always depicted on tiptoe, a detail that the director strongly wanted in her film.

Accompanying her on this adventure are Ken ( Ryan Gosling), and many other Barbies, including a mermaid Barbie, played by pop star Dua Lipa. She also curated the soundtrack, along with other artists such as Billie Eilish. One of the big names in the cast is Helen Mirren as the narrator. The film will also feature a previously unseen John Cena, as a merman, and some faces from Sex Education, such as Emma Mackey, who is credited with a strong resemblance to Margot.

From the Venus influencer to the inclusiveness of Barbie

From Greek statuary, through Renaissance art, women have always been subjected to unattainable aesthetic canons, after all, just think that Venus was a divinity. An extreme concept of beauty is therefore proposed that humans would not have been able to live up to. Botticelli's painting is one of the iconic works of Italian art, so his Venus has been turned into an influencer to publicise Italy's cultural heritage with the Open to Meraviglia campaign. An invitation to the dolce vita, demonstrating the power of beauty even centuries later.

Today, inclusivity has made its way into the concept of beauty and Gerwig's Barbie is an example of this. Although aesthetically Barbie's figure remains impeccable, the film shows that she is not perfect, that life has its difficulties and that beauty is not enough to cope with it. Margot Robbie restores a human dimension to a cultural phenomenon that is as incisive as it is distant from reality. The inclusive beauty praised in the film is a metaphor for the birth of a woman free from all canons. All that remains is to reflect on the journey of imperfection through beauties from different eras, from Botticelli's Birth of Venus to the latest Barbie models.

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Barbie and the Birth of Venus | Beauty icons through the ages - Hypercritic

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The Birth of Venus and the iconic Barbie doll are two very different cultural objects. The former is a famous Renaissance painting created by Sandro Botticelli in the 15th century, depicting the goddess Venus, while Barbie is a popular line of dolls launched in 1959 by the Mattel production company.

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Location of the visited exhibition

Albrecht Dürer, painter, engraver, and theoretician of the German Renaissance, created the Book of the Apocalypse in 1498 using fifteen woodcuts. The pages of this book include not only the graphic representation but also the writings of the Book of the Apocalypse. In the fourth woodcut of the Apocalypse cycle, Dürer depicts The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the first four of the seven seals that had to be opened for the Apocalypse to begin.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Who are the four horsemen

The first four seals and four horsemen are Conquest, War, Famine, and : the four forces that move History. The names of the horsemen are not mentioned, and their symbolic meaning must be guessed from their features. Although the woodcuts are in black and white, the iconography of three of the four horses have very specific colors. To enable the observer to identify the characters, Dürer highlights their weapons.

The representation

The first horseman from the bottom in Dürer's woodcut is Death (or Pestilence), depicted as an old, malnourished man, and like him his horse. This character is holding a trident, and in the text the color of his horse is green. The next rider is Famine, a man on a black horse. This character is holding a balance, an instrument used to weigh essential goods such as barley and wheat. The third horseman is War; this would allude to civil war and any other form of violence. His weapon is a long sword, and the color of his horse is red.

The Horsemen of the Apocalypse 1887, Victor Vasnetsov
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

The last horseman is Conquest, a man holding a bow and arrow, on a white horse. The opinions of biblical scholars differ; it is still unclear whether this horseman represents evil or a beneficial force, and even less which force it is. For some, this horseman represents the war of conquest, hence militarism; for others, this horseman is linked to Christ, to God, and good because of the many lexical, chromatic, and iconographic features (such as the crown, the bow, and the color white linked to goodness.)

Good Omens and the new horsemen of the Apocalypse

In the Amazon Prime Video original TV series, based on the novel by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, the angel Aziraphale ( Michael Sheen) and the demon Crowley ( David Tennant) team up to avert the end of the world. It is the coming of the Antichrist ( Daniel Mays) that triggers the Apocalypse, but it is the arrival of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse that signals the beginning. In Pop Culture, for example in the X-Men of Marvel Comics, the white knight, Conquest, is often replaced by Pestilence; this is what happens in Good Omens, but with a contemporary twist.

Since the TV series is set in modern times (2019), Pestilence gives way to Pollution. To make the riders even more contemporary, the authors of Good Omens have replaced the horses with motorbikes, while maintaining the traditional colors of the steeds. Substituting Pollution for Pestilence is a way of communicating to the public that science has eradicated many diseases. However, according to today's data, pollution is a new form of pestilence. So this is also a way of communicating that the health of the planet is at risk, and with it, the health of humanity.

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The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse - Hypercritic

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Location of the visited exhibition Albrecht Dürer, painter, engraver, and theoretician of the German Renaissance, created the Book of the Apocalypse in 1498 using fifteen woodcuts. The pages of this book include not only the graphic representation but also the writings of the Book of the Apocalypse.

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Volume Three of the Guardians of the Galaxy (James Gunn, 2023, Marvel Cinematic Universe) honours and completes the previous episodes since the beginning. The opening with prepares the public for the emotional impact and the concepts of the whole movie. Among the main themes, there are memory and creation. They are recalled by references to the works of one of the greatest personalities and works of the Renaissance: the and the Creation of Adam by Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564).

Michelangelo's Creation of Adam and Pietà: Iconic and Immortal citations

While watching the movie, the public can recognize that art history is the guest star in a couple of scenes. There are indeed two cameos of artworks by Michelangelo Buonarroti. The first is the Creation of Adam from the Sistine Chapel, and the second is the statue of the Pietà (St. Peter's Basilica, Rome). The Creation is one of the framed sections of the whole fresco decoration of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Michelangelo painted it and the bottom wall solo in four years, finishing the work in 1512. The scene is part of the nine central stories of Creation from the Book of Genesis. It comes before the Creation of Eve and after the Creation of the world. The gesture of God became iconic and inspiring for many subsequent artists and is still a pop icon nowadays.

Michelangelo sculpted the Pietà between 1497 and 1499 for Jean de Bilhères (1434/39-1499), ambassador of King Charles VIII (1470-1498) at the court of Pope Alexander VI (1431-1503). The group became famous as it represented something innovative within Renaissance art. The iconography followed the Nordic model but renewed it by using the Leonardesque triangle scheme in the composition. The Virgin's aspect is young, following the spiritualisation process also launched by Leonardo. There is no pain in her expression, different from the Nordic versions of the group ( IMAGE). This sculpture finds many citations also in various comic books, according to comic fans, so that sometimes they see it as 'plagiarism'.

Marvel's Olympus and its version of a new Renaissance

[Spoiler Alert] Adam Warlock ( Will Poulter) is the powerful and perfect being created by the High Priestess ( Elizabeth Debicki) of the Sovereign civilization. He bursts into the Guardians headquarters, Knowhere, to retrieve Rocket (Bradley Cooper), one of the creations of the High Evolutionary ( Chukwudi Iwuji), who has shown himself capable of creative thought. The attempt fails, and he comes back to his mother, upset. At that moment, she takes him on her lap, just like the Virgin does in the Pietà, hushing her son and reclining her young beautiful face. In this case, the whiteness of the marble is replaced by the golden tones. They overwhelm the environment, harmonizing with the armours of the two and with their hair, skin and dark golden eyes. Everything recalls godliness; thus, the Renaissance art of Michelangelo served to support a new holiness. Christian art served to recognize the new Olympus of the Marvel Universe.

As soon as the Guardians succeed in their last mission - saving Rocket from the High Evolutionary's experiments and defeating him - Peter ( Chris Pratt) drops his Zune and goes back to retrieve it. He does not have time to escape to safety, starts to freeze, his face swells up, and his body floats away. All of a sudden, Adam Warlock's finger appears close-up. The frame widens, and the two hands and the figures are just like in Michelangelo but chased by golden flames. While we expect the spark of life to start, Adam seizes Peter's arm and hugs him to a safe rescue. The silhouette of the iconic gesture is clear, while the plain perspective of Michelangelo becomes a background of fire and explosions. The two figures appear, however, isolated and idealized like the Sistine ones, before going back to the Guardians.

Symbolic images: The gold and the flame?

In the photography choices, elements are relevant to the plot and the concept that the two artistic citations convey. First of all, the gold: either in the scene with the High Priestess or the one with Star-Lord, the golden tones are prominent, swarming into the image. The golden vision is present in scenes involving the High Priestess and her son, symbolizing more than power and perfection. Gold is indeed the element of pure light in which God lives from a Christian perspective. However, in a pagan world, gold is the element of wealth and idolatry. Adam shines a brilliant shade of gold when he is in his full powers and vitality. When he is not and lays on the lap of his mother, this glow decreases to a browner tone.

The scene of the rescue of Star-Lord contains a shade of gold again, but the explosion and the flames hold a leading role. They contrast indeed with the traits of Peter Quill, who freezes and starts to become pale blue. As the citation is from a Christian artwork, the first meaning that flames suggest is the one of martyrdom. Flames are attributes of some of the most famous saints as well as of the Holy Ghost in the Pentecost. They also symbolize the torments of Hell and religious fervour. Peter accomplishes an apparently innocent gesture as he takes the risk while retrieving a small insignificant object. Nevertheless, that object is of great value to him. It represents the preservation of human civilization, parallel to the rescue of Rocket's fellows, other living beings with values. That object to Peter is the hope of surviving of its human part, the emotional one that links him to the past and to his memories.

Adam: Creature or creator? Overturning the creation patterns

[ Spoiler Alert ]The classical iconography of the Creation of Adam in art follows mainly three variations. The first represents God who breathes life into Adam's nostrils. In the second type, God places a small flying figure to Adam, the spirit of life. God touches Adam with the right hand while pointing a finger.

In the movie sequence, the scene in question only focuses on some details of Michelangelo's Creation. The figure of Adam is results-focused, while Star-Lord does not have the youthful expression of the Italian artwork. He is indeed becoming frozen, meaning his gaze is fixed and lost. The hand of Peter and the finger of Adam Warlock are the focus of the sequence, even though the gesture of Adam, who embraces Peter, is surprising.

Of course, the parallel between Adam Warlock and the first of the humans is flawless. In origin, his character appeared with the name " Him", the male parent of the whole of humanity. The same name, "Adam", connects to humanity as its original meaning is " linked to the earth". The role of Adam Warlock is, therefore, changed: he is no longer the creature but the creator. Indeed, Adam's finger looms suddenly on the screen as the creators': it represents the means that God used to give life to humans, but previously to spare Darkness and Light, to create the stars and the Sun and to generate Nature's realm. In this tragic situation, Adam Warlock changes his role: he is firstly a creature of the High Priestess, a kidnapper who only obeys high orders. Now he has evolved and learned new values and principles, choosing to be the creator and save one significant life.

The beauty of Marvel Universe is indeed the variety of references and the ability to give birth to a brand new Renaissance and at the same time to move comic fans. New generations of the public can indeed learn significant values and get curious about art history while enjoying their favourite hero adventures. Michelangelo created an iconic yet holy pantheon in his day, nowadays Marvel gives birth to a new one, inspired by him and universally recognised.

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Pietà and Creation of Adam in The Guardians of the Galaxy - Hypercritic

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The Guardians of the Galaxy includes references to the works of Michelangelo Buonarroti: the Pietà and the Creation of Adam.

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https://hypercritic.org/collection/raffaello-sanzio-madonna-di-foligno-1511-1512/

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Madonna di Foligno gathers all Raffaello Sanzio’s fundamentals - Hypercritic

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Raffaello’s painting Madonna di Foligno is a colorful example of an ex-voto, a form of religious offering to a divinity after a request has been granted.

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Orpheus and Eurydice | The seeds of Titian’s style - Hypercritic

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Orpheus and Eurydice belongs to the early activity of Titian Vecellio. It contains the seeds of his artistic revolution in the use of colors.

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Location of the visited exhibition

One of the best-known works by Renaissance artist Andrea del Sarto, Madonna of the Harpies is an altarpiece commissioned for the convent hospital church of San Francesco dei Macci in Florence and probably painted in 1517. It's now in the Uffizi Gallery in the same city.

The 'harpies' of the title are the pagan iconographic images, at the corners of the base. They support the Virgin, who is pictured holding a book and the baby Jesus. On her right stands Saint John the Evangelist. On the left, Saint Francis of Assisi, the convent's titular saint.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

Particular Iconography

It is not rare to find sacred representations with elements from pagan iconography. Many Nativities show some destroyed pagan temples in the background. This symbolizes how the birth of Christ puts an end to a belief that is no longer valid.

In this case, however, the Madonna is not standing on the pedestal to destroy it but to exalt her. This creates a strange dialogue between the Virgin Mary, an icon of salvation, and the monstrous harpies, who were mythical monsters with the wings and form of a bird and the face of a human.

Later iconographic readings claim that the harpies could be linked with the locusts of the Apocalypse. However, this iconography is complex to decode, so much so that an expert writer and painter like Giorgio Vasari could not recognize it. In today's eyes, the Madonna of the Harpies reveals itself as the exaltation of the divinity and its pagan counterpart, both in the title and the representation.

If it were a film

If this work were a film, it would be The Brand New Testament by Jaco Van Dormael. A cinematographic work that shows us how, after René Magritte, surrealism in Belgium has never waned.

The film gives us insight into God's life and his daughter with a grotesque and irreverent slant. It represents divinity from an extremely topical perspective: nothing has ever been sacred, everything remains and shines in a pagan key.

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Madonna of the Harpies | Between divinity and nature - Hypercritic

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Location of the visited exhibition One of the best-known works by Renaissance artist Andrea del Sarto, Madonna of the Harpies is an altarpiece commissioned for the convent hospital church of San Francesco dei Macci in Florence and probably painted in 1517. It's now in the Uffizi Gallery in the same city.

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The Chamber of the Abbess | The impossible art reproduction - Hypercritic

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The Chamber of the Abbess is a work by Antonio Allegri, known as Correggio. It belongs to the early stage of his mature phase.

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In 1573, the Renaissance artist Paolo Veronese painted The Feast in the House of Levi to depict the episode of the Last Supper, a painting which would become one of the most contentious art works of the sixteenth century.

By the age of fifteen, in 1543, Paolo Veronese's painting and use of color were already extremely proficient and advanced. Even though still an apprentice, he was already beginning to paint parts of an altarpiece in Verona by himself. By his late teens, he was being commissioned by churches to produce entire works: over a fifty-year period till his death in 1588, he would paint more than seventy major pieces.

A monumental and vibrant Last Supper

In 1573 the Dominicans of the convent of Saints John and Paul in Venice commissioned Veronese to paint a Last Supper scene. They wanted a traditional biblical scene to replace one previously painted by Titian that had been destroyed in a fire. The painting was destined for the monks' refectory, where they ate. So, inspired by his previous work, The Marriage at Cana, Veronese went to town. He created a 73 square meter work, one of the largest ever painted in the 16th century.

He filled it with primary and subsidiary characters, color, movement, superb portraiture, a vast sweeping pictorial narrative, at the center of which is the figure of Christ at a banquet. The scene refers to a passage in the Gospel of St.Luke. Veronese has filled his painting with Roman architecture and multiple characters: not just the apostles, Jesus, Judas Iscariot, but a dwarf jester, children, a cat and dog, drunken German soldiers, an apostle picking his teeth with a fork. The canvas swarms and swirls with activity, and is far from the classical ones, which have intimate and solemn tones, like Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

Painters, poets, madmen and the freedom of Art

Religious painting in Italy, like Veronese's proposed Last Supper scene for the monks' refectory, was regulated by the carefully adhered-to rules of The Council of Trent. They forbade excessive use of decorative or aesthetic elements in canvases in case they detracted from the focal religious message. Veronese found himself called to face the six-member Holy Tribunal of Venice, headed by an Inquisitor. Their aim was to maintain a harmonious status quo both political and religious between the Vatican and the Venetian Republic. They said that the addition of such perceived ephemera as jesters and drunken soldiers proscribed Veronese's work as being a fitting representation of The Last Supper. Pressed by questions, the artist declared that "painters take the same liberties as poets and madmen take". With this statement, he stated that there was no sinful intent in his representation.

So he was ordered to change the painting. But ultimately he simply kept it extant but altered the title, to The Feast at the House of Levi, who was the future apostle Matthew. This is the moment when Jesus announces, at a banquet, that one of his disciples will betray him. The Tribunal of Venice allowed the matter to rest there, and four hundred and fifty years later, the painting is now in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in the same city.

The Feast in the House of Levi - A detail.
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

Innovative dimensions of Christ's Passion

With its crowded and vivid scene, the Veronese's Feast in the House of Levi would be the musical Jesus Christ Superstar. Both works represent episodes of the Gospel and give a new and unique interpretation of it. The innovation lies in the language used: colorful and multiform in Veronese's work, with a rock sound and dance in the case of Andrew Lloyd Webber 's musical.

The two authors intend to tell the Passion story using non-canonical languages, closest to people. This way, they gave a new perspective to one of the most well-known stories of all time.

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The Feast in the House of Levi | The power of being disruptive - Hypercritic

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In 1573, the Renaissance artist Paolo Veronese painted The Feast in the House of Levi to depict the episode of the Last Supper, a painting which would become one of the most contentious art works of the sixteenth century. By the age of fifteen, in 1543, Paolo Veronese's painting and use of color were already extremely proficient and advanced.

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Location of the visited exhibition

In The Deposition From the Cross, Jacopo Pontormo gives an unconventional take on the deposition of Christ. In bright colors, it shows no crucifix, and angels don't have their wings.

Pontormo's palette of iridescent hues is the signature of the era. In fact, in the early decades of the 1500s, the paintings were not only multicolored. They went even further to challenge the viewer's eye with contrasting colors, often in acid tones.

A frenzied rhythm

The biblical painting contains a frenzied rhythm, emphasized further by the poses and tense faces of its characters.

The Virgin's hand extended towards the son is expressive and belies her condition, at the brink of fainting. The other figures meld together, not only for their twisted postures but also for the lack of distinguishing attributes. Finally, the public can see Pontormo's Deposition From the Cross in the same place he originally installed it. It is a rare case.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain

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Pontormo's unconventional Deposition From the Cross - Hypercritic

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Location of the visited exhibition In The Deposition From the Cross , Jacopo Pontormo gives an unconventional take on the deposition of Christ. In bright colors, it shows no crucifix, and angels don't have their wings. Pontormo's palette of iridescent hues is the signature of the era.

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The Teatro Olimpico is a Renaissance-era theater built in the last years of the sixteenth century in the northern Italian city of Vicenza. It is the last work of the celebrated architect Andrea Palladio, who was born in Padua, which at the time of the theater's construction in 1580, was in the then-Venetian Republic. Palladio is and was the eternal father of Palladian architecture, and the theater was his swansong. Although it wasn't completed until four years after his death in 1580.

His farewell to art and architecture encompasses all of the influences that Palladio had drawn from studying Roman theaters' design. Many of these influences derived from the writing of the early Roman engineer and architect Marcus Vitruvius Pollio. His drawings of and writings on the importance of perspective lead Leonardo da Vinci to draw his epic illustration called Vitruvian Man.

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, via Wikimedia Commons / Public domain

Palladio designed everything in the Teatro Olimpico, except for the scenes beyond the openings of the backdrop. The architect had planned a single perspective for the central opening and painted curtains for covering the two lateral ones.

Drawing and undrawing the curtains: the illusion of Thebes' seven streets

The etymology of the word curtain is from the Latin word 'cortina,' for a veil or cloth. And it became used to delineate physical or imaginary separation between the theatre stage and the Skene, a Greek word used for the backstage area, or the backdrop. Often, nothing but a painted curtain was sufficient for illustrating performances. The Greeks, like the Romans later on, created a backdrop in the architecture of their theaters.

Image courtesy of Giuseppe Barberis, via Wikimedia Commons / Public domain.

Vincenzo Scamozzi was a younger contemporary of Palladio, also an architect, also from the Venetian Republic. He made the most of the stage's openings, and was one of the primary inheritors of Palladio's influence. Scamozzi designed the scenery for the Oedipus Rex opera first performed at the inauguration of the theater in 1585.

On this occasion, Scamozzi used all of the five possible stage angles and openings, three frontal and two side ones. He used them to represent a city scene. The seven streets of Thebes, those leading to the seven gates, develop in-depth through a masterful illusion of perspective.

The installation would have been temporary and installed only for the purposes of that performance. But it turned out to be so appreciated that it was kept permanently. The Theatre in Vicenza is still in use today, as a UNESCO-listed cultural heritage site.

Forced perspective, or how to create an illusory space

The use of forced perspective is not uncommon in the history of architecture. Using optical illusion, it enables an object or person to appear closer, further away, bigger or smaller than in reality it is or they are. Like Scamozzi, Francesco Borromini used this technique to construct the Colonnade of Palazzo Spada in Rome in 1653.

In this case, Borromini gave the illusion of a colonnade thirty-five meters long by exploiting a space of slightly less than nine meters, through clever use of mathematical cunning and expertise. In the original project, a painted curtain was to depict a thick forest, sitting at the end of this colonnade. But later on, a statue of a warrior was placed there which appears in an illusory way to be life-size, but its real measurements are small.

Image courtesy of Livioandronico2013, via Wikimedia / CC BY-SA 4.

In the grand theatre of the world, people are creators of an illusory reality that they shape as they please. The Teatro Olimpico, and the Colonnade of Palazzo Spada too, could tell of a possible underlying moral. The greatness of things in the world is only an appearance, an image, an illusion. Or is it? The fact that Palladian architecture and the Teatro Olimpico have lasted would suggest the opposite. Perhaps the last word belongs with that master of what is lasting or isn't. The Prince of Denmark, Hamlet. For as he says, in Act I of the play that bears his name:

Is the greatness of things merely an appearance?

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Teatro Olimpico | Is the greatness of things merely an appearance? - Hypercritic

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The Teatro Olimpico is a Renaissance-era theater built in the last years of the sixteenth century in the northern Italian city of Vicenza. It is the last work of the celebrated architect Andrea Palladio, who was born in Padua, which at the time of the theater's construction in 1580, was in the then-Venetian Republic.

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The Nativity with Saints Lawrence and Francis of Assisi is a work by Michelangelo Merisi, known as Caravaggio. Painted in 1600, the work was originally placed in the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo, from which it was stolen in 1969. Based on the accounts of the first biographers Giovanni Baglione and Giovan Pietro Bellori Caravaggio painted the Nativity between 1608 and 1609. Only in recent years, was it was discovered, due to stylistic doubts, that the painting had been commissioned years earlier by the merchant Fabio Nuti in Rome. The canvas depicts the birth of Christ with Saint Lawrence, the owner of the Oratory, and also Saint Francis, to whom the devotion of the Venerable Company, which ran the Oratory at the time.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

The intense style of Caravaggio

Caravaggio made the work 'real' by giving his characters the faces of the outcasts, the poor. But nobles and clergy were opposed to Caravaggio's choice. This because he represents the biblical characters as ordinary people, and not as divinities. By representing people, Caravaggio makes the audience part of the painting, so that they can better identify in the work. What makes the canvas more dramatic, however, is the play of light and shadow. The balance between these is Caravaggio's hallmark. To achieve these effects, the artist studied where to place lamps and candles to create the points of light.

Caravaggio's personality and style inspired many painters during the 17th century, the so-called Caravaggesque. Among these Caravaggesque painters are Jusepe de Ribera and Artemisia Gentileschi.

Judith Beheading Holofernes, Caravaggio, 1600-1602
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

Judith Beheading Holofernes, Artemisia Gentileschi, 1620
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

Nativity 2.0

Between 17 and 18 October 1969, in Palermo, Sicily, an organized criminal gang allegedly stole Caravaggio's Nativity. In 2010, the members of Factum Arte used cutting-edge technology to bring the work back to life. Peter Glidewell, the AMS, Curia's Cultural Heritage Office, Ballandi Multimedia, and Sky Arte International, are those who initiated the creative process. Sky Arte International created a documentary entitled Operation Caravaggio to immortalize the birth of this "Nativity 2.0". The restorer Paolo Ferri and the two contemporary artists Adam Lowe and Jordi Pons also collaborated on this project. On 12 December 2015, the 3D copy of the Nativity returned to Palermo, on the altar of the Oratory, bringing back to the city the stolen heritage and with it, also its value and the identity lost by the community.

The new guardians of the artistic heritage

On 15 April 2019, a terrible fire devastated Notre Dame Cathedral. Ubisoft, the producer of the Assassin's Creed video game, donated 500,000 euros to help rebuild the Cathedral. In addition, Ubisoft has given away a digital version of Assassin's Creed Unity, the chapter of the series set in Paris, on the uPlay platform. The company's aim was to encourage players to donate to the reconstruction of the Cathedral.

Rumors said that the video game, with its many views of the Cathedral, could be useful for its reconstruction. However, this was not possible, as the artist Caroline Miousse took some artistic liberties. She had to create additional elements necessary for the game. Other elements, however, had to undergo necessary changes, because a large part of the Cathedral is subject to copyright. But many video games interact with the world of art, including the new chapter in the video game series published by Nintendo, Animal Crossing - New Horizons. So, on the occasion of International Museum Day and the reopening of museums in May 2020, after the closure imposed by anti-Covid regulations, Nintendo decided to give players the chance to open their own virtual museum with a personal gallery.

Another example of art meeting video games is Occupy White Walls. This video game, developed by StickyPixels, allows players to create their own art gallery. The aim of the game is to make art accessible to everyone. In this way, those who do not have the possibility to enjoy a work of art in a museum can do so virtually thanks to Occupy White Walls.

Between 3D reproductions of works of art and videogames that encourage musealization, the hope is that these new technologies can protect artistic heritage. Therefore, what happened to Caravaggio's Nativity could be an example for the conservation of cultural heritage in the future; a new method of safeguarding community identity.

With the return of Caravaggio's Nativity, 3D technology has succeeded in something hitherto unthinkable, returning the work to the community and ensuring that Caravaggio's desire to create a dialogue with his audience, the people, was ultimately fulfilled.

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The Nativity | Art comes alive with new technologies - Hypercritic

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The Nativity with Saints Lawrence and Francis of Assisi is a work by Michelangelo Merisi, known as Caravaggio. Painted in 1600, the work was originally placed in the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo, from which it was stolen in 1969.

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Since the beginning of storytelling, allegories have been used in narratives to convey morals and teachings. From folk legends to sacred scriptures, fairy tales, and even movies. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the children's novel by the famous English author Roald Dahl, is one of these allegorical stories. The deadly sins (or capital vices) find a symbolic interpretation both in the original work - made eternal by the character of Willy Wonka - and in its various adaptations. A truly modern iconography that allows for a multi-layered reading, staging a child-friendly Dantean hell.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is inspired by real events

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was first published in 1964 by Alfred A. Knopf in the US and George Allen & Unwin in the UK. The author was inspired by some real events. For example, the habit of Cadbury's, one of the most famous confectionery manufacturers in the UK, to send free samples to university students in advance, and then start mass production of only those sweets that received the best grades. In addition, an actual war between candy manufacturers began in the twenties. The novel tells of real-life spies sent to steal secret recipes from competitors.

The sequel to the novel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, was published in 1972. Although Dahl originally intended to write a trilogy, the third volume remained unfinished. American director Mel Stuart made the first movie adaptation in 1971, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, starring Gene Wilder. In 2007, Tim Burton engaged the versatile Johnny Depp to play the eccentric chocolate maker in his movie of the same name. In December 2023, was released in cinemas, a prequel directed by Paul King and dedicated to the chocolate factory's founder and owner, played by Timothée Chalamet.

The plot: five children blessed with good fortune

Charlie Bucket is a boy born into a family so poor that his four grandparents share the only bed. His father works in a toothpaste factory, and his mother can only cook cabbage soup. Only once a year, on his birthday, does Charlie get a chocolate bar, which he loves. The day before Charlie's birthday, Willy Wonka, the owner of the mysterious chocolate factory that has been operating without workers for many years, announces a contest. He has hidden five golden tickets in the packages of his famous chocolate bars. The five children who find them will visit his factory and receive a lifetime supply of confectionery.

August Gloop, a chubby, sweet-toothed kid, soon finds the first ticket. Veruca Salt, a spoiled young girl allergic to the answer "no", gets the second. Violetta Beauregarde, a champion who can't lose a contest, wins the third, even though she doesn't like chocolate. Mike Teavee, a child addicted to television, wins the fourth ticket by solving an algorithm. When he receives his bar, Charlie unwraps it with trembling hands but finds only chocolate. A few days later, luck is on his side and he finds some money outside a sweet shop. So he becomes the fifth lucky child to visit Wonka's Chocolate Factory.

Modern fairy tales and ancestral systems

The first edition of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory also included original drawings by the author to support and complete the descriptions. The illustrations show the characters exactly as Roald Dahl imagined them. They also create a link between the novel and classic children's books. In addition, Dahl's narrator speaks directly to the reader, creating a dialogue reminiscent of oral storytelling.

The characters also share some similarities with folk and historical stories. The Oompa-Loompas are small creatures from a distant and mysterious world. They recall the singing, hardworking dwarves of . Even the squirrels, trained to peel nuts, recall the anthropomorphic animals that appear in many fairy tales, such as Cinderella's mice. The factory itself, a gluttonous dream of candy, is halfway between 's Pleasure Island and a giant version of Hansel and Gretel's candy house. Moreover, the children's appearance seems to give a tangible form to their personalities, expressing their weaknesses.

It's great to be kids

Augustus, Veruca, Violetta, and Mike embody a capital vice that will cause them to pay the consequences of their actions. Charlie, on the other hand, becomes a symbol of childlike purity. Many of Dahl's works - including James and the Giant Peach (1961) and Matilda (1988) - deal with the moral superiority of children. Adults, on the other hand, are often portrayed as insensitive and silly, too attached to the material world to get to the heart of reality. This is also a recurring theme in The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, although Charlie is more like Oliver Twist and other characters, as extreme poverty shapes his personality. Wonka himself owes his incomparable genius to the fact that he never really grew up, and so he retained a deep connection to the childlike ability to dream.

So children find themselves as modern-day Davids dealing with Goliath. The latter, in addition to being older, have the power to make decisions. But that doesn't mean the end is preordained. As in the best legends, Dahl teaches us that heroes can take on any dimension. Rather, cunning and a noble spirit are their weapons, allowing them to win even when it seems impossible.

Willy Wonka, eclectic and crazy, becomes a guide in a heaven that sometimes turns into hell for those who break the rules. Just as classic fairy tales hide a moral, the narrator's voice instinctively clarifies a lesson, never exaggerating or becoming a know-it-all. Augustus, Veruca, Violetta, and Mike give concrete form to sins that deserve punishment. In this way, Dahl's story becomes a modern allegory that makes vices real and creates a new iconography.

The iconography of the Deadly Sins in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

In Christianity, the seven deadly sins are a category of immoral behavior. Although they aren't directly mentioned in the , there are some analogies to the seven acts that God abhors in the Book of Proverbs. The behaviors in this category can lead to other sins. Pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth are the seven capital vices. These evils are often opposed to virtues, especially the three theological virtues and the four cardinal virtues.

The word "vice" comes from the Latin "vĭtĭum," which means lack or deviant habit. Because these vices are worse and crucial to human nature, they are considered "capital". Their categorization began with the Desert Fathers, especially Evagrio Pontico. Later, his disciple Giovanni Cassiano spread it throughout Europe, thanks to the book The Cenobitic Institutions. This categorization deeply influenced Catholic confessional practice, as well as literary works such as Dante's Purgatorio. Various works of art in Catholic churches and ancient volumes depict the seven deadly sins. In the Western Christian tradition, these sins were considered to be terrible deeds, on a par with those against the Holy Spirit and those praying for heavenly vengeance.

Gluttony / Augustus Gloop

The very next day, the first Golden Ticket was found. The finder was a boy called Augustus Gloop, and Mr. Bucket's evening newspaper carried a large picture of him on the front page. The picture showed a nine-year-old boy who was so enormously fat he looked as though he had been blown up with a powerful pump. Great flabby folds of fat bulged out from every part of his body, and his face was like a monstrous ball of dough with two small greedy curranty eyes peering out upon the world. The town in which Augustus Gloop lived, the newspaper said, had gone wild with excitement over their hero.
Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964)

This is how the author portrays Augustus Gloop, the first winner of Willy Wonka's Golden Ticket. Like Dahl, artists from past centuries, from to Jacques Callot, from Hieronymus Bosch to , have interpreted the capital vices, each with their iconography.

The sin of gluttony is considered one of the deadly sins. It is opposed to the virtue of modesty and is associated with social injustice, especially in the Middle Ages, when poor people couldn't buy food. Each sin has its symbolic iconography. Gluttony is identified with the possibility of visibly changing the body, making it fat and deformed. Sometimes these subjects were depicted with their necks stretched out, or together with animals traditionally associated with greed, such as bears, wolves, or pigs.

In Dante's context, gluttons are represented as a shapeless mass, covered with dark mud, without joy or hunger. Dante and Virgilio walk carelessly on this infernal slime. It symbolizes the loss of the gluttons' joyful hunger, now reduced to stinking souls submerged in a sea of dark mud.

Lust / Veruca Salt

The newspapers announced that the second Golden Ticket had been found. The lucky person was a small girl called Veruca Salt who lived with her rich parents in a great city far away. Once again Mr. Bucket's evening newspaper carried a big picture of the finder. She was sitting between her beaming father and mother in the living room of their house, waving the Golden Ticket above her head, and grinning from ear to ear.
Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964)

Lust is the sin associated with Veruca Salt, the second winner of Wonka's Golden Ticket. An extreme attachment to material goods is the manifestation of this vice, which was considered particularly serious in the Middle Ages. Carnal sins, such as those committed by Paolo and Francesca, are also equated with lust. During the Renaissance, the gravity of this sin diminished, allowing men to satisfy their desires. As a result, lust can be represented as a female figure, ugly and naked, afflicted by snakes, or beautiful as Venus, the seductive goddess of love. Animals such as rabbits, crocodiles, billy goats, and partridges often represent lust.

Dante's contrapasso for lascivious sinners is represented in the second circle of Hell. They are pursued by an infernal wind, a representation of the uncontrolled desire that led them to sin during their life on earth. This tempestuous wind relentlessly pushes lascivious souls back and forth, never finding peace. They are doomed to wander forever in this blizzard, symbolizing the lack of control and stability that characterized their behavior in life.

Pride / Violetta Beauregarde

The third ticket was found by a Miss Violet Beauregarde. There was great excitement in the Beauregarde household when our reporter arrived to interview the lucky young lady. [...] And the famous girl was standing on a chair in the living room waving the Golden Ticket madly at arm's length as though she were flagging a taxi. She was talking very fast and very loudly to everyone, but it was not easy to hear all that she said because she was chewing so ferociously upon a piece of gum at the same time
Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964)

The character of Violetta is associated with the sin of pride. It's a capital vice associated with considering oneself superior to everything, even laws. It is often depicted as a woman dressed in red admiring herself in a mirror. Sometimes she's in the company of a lion, a bat, an eagle, or a peacock. Often the mirror reflects Satan.

Purgatory is the contrapasso for those whose sin was pride in the Divine Comedy. Huge rocks, representing their arrogance, force the sinners to keep their heads down, crushed under their weight. Consequently, Dante's contrapasso for this vice is the complete reversal of this behavior through humiliation.

Wrath / Mike Teavee

"The Taevee household" said Mr Bucket, going on with his reading, "was crammed, like all the others, with excited visitors when our reporter arrived, but young Mike Taevee, the lucky winner, seemed extremely annoyed by the whole business. "Can't you fools see I'm watching television?" he said angrily. "I wish you wouldn't interrupt!"..."
Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964)

Because loss of control and a vengeful expression are common in this stage of life, when self-consciousness hasn't fully developed, anger is often associated with young characters like Mike Teavee. The youth is often depicted with fiery eyes and armed with a sword or dagger.

The fifth circle of hell in Dante's Divine Comedy depicts the contrapasso for those whose sin is wrath. There, irascible souls bet against each other in a muddy river called the Styx. Consequently, according to Dante's vision, the contrapasso for those who have sinned of wrath involves a punishment by which sinners remain trapped in a place that reflects the destructive and tumultuous nature of their anger.

Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

The four children also approach and respect this iconography in the movie adaptations of Dahl's novel. Especially in the 2005 Tim Burton movie.

Augustus Gloop ( Philip Wiegratz) is true to the author's description. The child nearly drowns in a giant river of chocolate, reminiscent of the dark mud that covers the gluttons in Dante's hell. Veruca Salt ( Julia Winter), the spoiled girl allergic to the word "no", remains the victim of an attack by the working squirrels who take her away. Violetta Beauregarde ( AnnaSophia Robb), the award-winning record champion who considers herself superior to her peers, finally suffers the humiliation of swelling up and becoming a giant rolling blueberry. Finally, Mike Teavee ( Jordan Fry) remains an irascible, know-it-all, TV- and video-game-obsessed boy who is eventually minimized by Wonka's "Television Chocolate".

The origins of Burton's adaptation

Roald Dahl was less than enthusiastic about Mel Stuart's first movie version, starring Gene Wilder. His screenplay had been discarded and later rewritten by David Seltzer, who added excessive changes to the original plot and melodies that the author found too sappy. After his death, Warner Bros. searched for a long time for the ideal director for a new adaptation. Finally, in agreement with Felicity Dahl and her daughter Lucy, they chose Tim Burton. Burton was a big fan of Dahl's work and had already produced an adaptation of one of his novels, the 1996 animated movie James and the Giant Peach. In addition, Burton did not like Stuart's adaptation, which he felt was too far removed from the original work.

Burton was able to read the original manuscripts when he visited the author's home. The director was particularly fascinated by the dark humor of some private versions of the original texts, which were later published only with several cuts for the parts considered "politically incorrect". Working together with screenwriter John August, they had only one goal: to remain faithful to the novel to make the movie "as Roald Dahl-y as possible".

To create the soundtrack, Burton asked his longtime collaborator Danny Elfman to join the project. Johnny Depp portrays Willy Wonka, and a young Freddie Highmore plays Charlie Bucket.

Novel vs. Movie

Burton's adaptation is more respectful of the original work. The artistic duo Burton/August includes several parts of the book that were cut from the 1971 movie, such as the construction of the giant chocolate palace for the Indian prince and the squirrels' attack on Veruca. However, the movie also includes other new elements, such as the father-son relationship and the importance of family, as well as the story of Wonka's origins.

On more than one occasion, Burton has explored the delicate relationship between parents and children, a theme he has investigated since his debut with the short movie . In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the director uses many flashbacks to recreate the conflict between Willy Wonka and his father, Dr. Wilbur Wonka ( Christopher Lee). These flashbacks show Wonka's childhood, misunderstood and unhappy, with a too-inflexible father, allowing the public to explore different sides of such an iconic character.

Depp's Wonka, the actor admitted, was to be completely different from Wilder's version. Depp and Burton's mad chocolatier was inspired by oddball characters from children's television, such as Bob Keeshan from Captain Kangaroo and Al Lewis from The Uncle Al Show. And for Wonka's hair and glasses, Depp turned to Vogue America director Anna Wintour.

Burton's technique and style

Burton's trademark elements are present in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The director's signature gothic aesthetic, with its dark tones, is evident in the extremely curved and sharp-edged Bucket house (a homage to the cabin where Dahl used to write), as well as in the family's faces and wardrobe. All the family members are excessively thin, due to the poverty in which they live, and feature the classic hollowed-out faces of the director's most famous characters (such as the unforgettable Emily in Corpse Bride).

The high-key lighting technique was used extensively for the scenes inside the factory to make them brighter and to highlight the brilliant and vivid colors, such as the red of Wonka's coat or the green of the fake chocolate grass, creating an extraordinary atmosphere. In addition, the high-key lighting emphasizes the contrast with the boring real world outside Wonka's factory.

The movie version of The Hells

The first adaptation was already considered a children's horror movie because of some frightening aspects of some scenes. Even in the movies, the adventure in the chocolate factory resembles a trip to Dante's hell suitable for children.

The children are sailing in a boat through a dark place, on a chocolate river reminiscent of the Styx. In the first adaptation, the scene is colored an intense red, and the parents who accompany them desperately ask when the terrible voyage will end. Moreover, in this particular case, Wonka replaces Virgilio. The chocolatier takes young Charlie/Dante on his journey through the chocolate factory and, symbolically, to heaven. In the movie, this is done by a super-fast elevator that flies with Charlie across the sky.

Each child/capital vice is punished by a kind of law that follows Dante's Contrapasso and is explained by the songs of the Oompa-Loompa. Each piece is also inspired by a musical style from the past.

Dahl originally intended the novel for an adult readership, and the children would have been seven like the deadly sins. But to keep the novel from becoming too long, he cut three characters from the first draft. In the following version, aimed at a younger readership, the author reworked his original idea and made his journey through hell suitable for children.

Tim Burton's version quickly became a cult classic and won several awards. The movie is the highest-grossing adaptation of a work by Roald Dahl. It is also the director's second biggest commercial success to date, surpassed only by Alice in Wonderland.

Big punishments for little sinners

Allegories, fairy tales, and parables share the narrative purpose of imparting values and lessons. In the case of fairy tales, these teachings are usually directed at children. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory collects this legacy, creating a seemingly simple plot based on a deep and complex scheme. Just as C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia combined elements of theology and Christian doctrine with a fantasy adventure, Dahl reinterprets the capital vices in a contemporary context.

Ancient iconography finds contemporary expression in the depiction of children, apt to convey how easy sin can be. Veruca, too young for carnal desire, expresses lust through her attachment to material goods. Augustus' gluttony, on the other hand, finds its ideal context in his lust for sweets. Violetta's pride is revealed in her inability to accept defeat, and Mike's anger in his bad temper, typical of a child unable to relate to other people.

The references to the Divine Comedy find expression in the punishment inflicted on the children as contrapasso. Comical, exaggerated punishments that don't endanger their health, but that can easily convey a moral: vices and sins do not lead to victory, they are mistakes that must be paid for. In the Divine Comedy, however, the contrapasso was designed for dead souls condemned to eternal pain in hell, while Dahl instilled hope in his teaching. After the children leave the factory, more or less safe, they can learn from their own mistakes and grow up to be better people. Only Charlie, humble and generous, deserves to reach a better state.

Beginning as a fairytale-like adventure, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory becomes an original reinterpretation of Dante's work for children. An extraordinary rereading in which a sweet heaven becomes hell for those who indulge in vices. And if it's not too early to sin, a proper punishment always offers redemption.

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Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory | An Allegory of the Deadly Sins - Hypercritic

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In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Willy Wonka is the leader of an allegorical world that depicts a modern iconography of deadly sins.

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The Raising of Lazarus shows Caravaggio’s innovations - Hypercritic

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In The raising of Lazarus, darker tones that would characterize the latter part of Caravaggio’s career first make their appearance.

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Judith Beheading Holofernes | Stories of women and revenge - Hypercritic

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Artemisia Gentileschi, was a 17th-century Caravaggesque artist. Artemisia painted Judith Beheading Holofernes in 1620 for Cosimo II de Medici.

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A woman with hair still messy from sleep, shirt still unbuttoned from a night of passion, pronounces the first words of the day.

She is Costanza Bonarelli, lover of Gian Lorenzo Bernini and wife of one of the master artist's students. In 1630s Rome the sculptor was in the prime of his production, and this work is part of the series " speaking likenesses": he portrays his subjects with lips parted, caught mid-sentence, creating a natural, spontaneous effect. Likewise, he created his Bust of Costanza Bonarelli as part of the series.

A love triangle

Costanza's story is one of a love triangle and profound jealousy that ends with the woman betraying Gian Lorenzo with his brother, Luigi Bernini, and the artist ordering to disfigure her as punishment. The Bust of Costanza Bonarelli is thus the only one that captures the likeness of a common person, with whom the maestro was so in love that he chose to sculpt in precious Carrara marble.

Image courtesy of sailko via Wikimedia Commons

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The Bust of Costanza Bonarelli hides a story of jealousy - Hypercritic

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Location of the visited exhibition A woman with hair still messy from sleep, shirt still unbuttoned from a night of passion, pronounces the first words of the day. She is Costanza Bonarelli, lover of Gian Lorenzo Bernini and wife of one of the master artist's students.

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Joseph the Carpenter shows de la Tour’s mise-en-scene - Hypercritic

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George de la Tour’s Joseph the Carpenter shows the painter is a master of lighting and a shift in Saint Joseph figure who becomes the protagonist.

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Born in Naples in 1615, Salvator Rosa was an Italian painter, engraver, poet, and author of seventeenth-century satires. It was a time when Italy was a collection of independent city-states, and Rosa first trained in Naples, much influenced by the well-known Spanish Baroque artist Jusepe de Ribera, with whom Rosa's brother-in-law trained. He moved to Rome, yet after writing satires that were perceived as being critical of the authorities in the city, including the great sculptor Lorenzo Bernini, Rosa was forced to flee and take refuge in Florence in 1640. There, Cardinal Giovan Carlo de' Medici, a scion of the powerful family, looked after him. A trip to Rome in 1650, via Naples, heralded Rosa's death in 1673.

The night of the witches

Salvator Rosa was an early exponent of Romanticism, the artistic and literary school that was to spring out of the celebration of feelings, nature, the rights of the individual that proved popular in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. His eye for figures, his self-portraits and his landscapes of a rebellious, untamed nature, often featuring classical and religious figures, became his signature style.
Between 1640 and 1649 he painted one of the best-known portrayals of the rituals of witchcraft, which is now on display in Houston, Texas, at the Audrey Jones Beck Building. The Witches' Sabbath is an example of how black magic and witchcraft are themes that often fascinated the painter, partly based on the Neapolitan religious traditionalism and awareness of the occult, partly because witchcraft and the popular fear of witches was widespread in the religiously-charged Europe of the time.

Northern European artists such as Leonard Bramer and the Dutch painter Jacob van Swanenburg - who taught Rembrandt - included the theme among their art. Rosa's other works on the subject include
the painting on display at the National Gallery in London, entitled Witches at their Incantations, which was done for the Florentine banker and collector Carlo Rossi around 1646. Rosa also wrote about witches in verse, as in the satirical ode La Strega (The Witch) which talks about the curse cast by a witch on a man who has not reciprocated her love.

"In quest'atra caverna,
ove non giunse mai raggio di sole,
dalle tartaree scuole
trarrò la turba inferna:
farò che un nero spirito
arda un cipresso un mirto.
e mentre a poco a poco
vi struggerò l'imago sua di cera,
farò che a ignoto foco
sua viva imago péra,
e quando arde la finta arda la vera."

Witches in Art

Between the 15th and 16th centuries, many painters chose witches and their rituals ( Sabbahs) as subjects to portray. This accompanied the many references in Egyptian culture, the Bible, and Greek culture, and prominent in the latter are the sorceresses Medea and .

The word Sabbah, understood as a gathering of witches, some demons, black spirits, first appears in the Middle Ages: witches would perform their rituals and spells, while popular belief was that some witches would have sex with the Devil himself, who appeared in the form of a goat. It was the famous Spanish painter Francisco Goya who depicted this ritual between 1820 and 1823 in his work Witches' Sabbath, or the Great He-Goat, which hangs today at the Prado Museum in Madrid.
The goat figure actually represents the pagan Horned God, or the fusion of ancient deities such as Cernunnos, the Horned God of the Celts, with the Greco-Roman deities Pan and Dionysus. It is thought that from this horned mythological figure came the image of the Devil who is the mythical figure of evil in Christian texts, thus casting a shadow over those who practised pagan religions.

The concept of the Sabbaths

The most widely-known and popularly used meaning of the word 'Sabbath' is that denoting a religious day of rest in the Jewish calendar, with the word deriving from the Greek 'sabbaton' or rest, itself etymologically linked to the Hebrew 'shabbath.' A sub-derivation of the word, via the French 'sabbat,' has come to mean a gathering of witches and demons where they performed their rituals. The 'h' has become included erroneously over time. The Canon Episcopi, meanwhile, was a text in 12th-century canon law that described pre-Christian, pagan rituals intended to instruct bishops on the attitude they should take toward witchcraft, and it went so far as to describe nocturnal encounters between certain women with the Greek and Roman Goddess Diana, the pagan deity of hunting, the moon and the countryside.

The Witches 2.0

Just as witches were once the subject of many works of art, today, they are the subject of many other kinds of works, especially in popular culture. The influence is linear, stretching from Shakespeare's Macbeth, the Chronicles of Narnia, up to such modern films as The Witches of Eastwick, Susperia and Stardust. Then there are Hocus Pocus, Charmed, and The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Last but not least, director also talks about these creatures in the new Netflix series Wednesday. Charmed, meanwhile, is a fantasy TV series that aired between 1998 and 2006, then returned in 2018 in an incarnation that continues to this day.

Conceived by Constance M. Burge, Charmed chronicles the adventures of the Halliwell sisters, Prue ( Shannen Doherty), Piper ( Holly Marie Combs), Phoebe ( Alyssa Milano), and from the fourth season, the fourth sister Paige ( Rose McGowan) also takes over. Endowed with powers dating back to the prophecy of the "Book of Shadows," the Halliwell sisters are destined to become the most powerful witches in history. Broadcast in fifty-five countries, Charmed is considered one of the most popular fantasy series ever; at the end of the eighth season that aired in 2006, itwas awarded, among others, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences award for the title of the longest-running female-led TV series in history.

So one thing is for sure, the world of witchcraft, with its mysteries and shadows, continues to fascinate and make people talk about it. The same magic once portrayed by Salvator Rosa in his works is now being brought back to small and big screens, intriguing an ever-growing audience, enchantment or spell?

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The Witches' Sabbath | Witches of yesterday and today - Hypercritic

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Born in Naples in 1615, Salvator Rosa was an Italian painter, engraver, poet, and author of seventeenth-century satires. It was a time when Italy was a collection of independent city-states, and Rosa first trained in Naples, much influenced by the well-known Spanish Baroque artist Jusepe de Ribera, with whom Rosa's brother-in-law trained.

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The Painter’s Studio and the power of Spices - Hypercritic

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Between 1647 and 1650 Adriaen van Ostade painted The Painter’s Studio, work currently on display in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

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Naples experienced an era of artistic splendour during the 17th century. During the first two decades, Caravaggio lived in the city, forever leaving his mark on the artistic environment. The painter, already at the height of his career, had numerous commissions that still adorn Neapolitan churches and private collections. There were two generations of painters who worked along the lines of caravaggism. Their works had strong contrasts of chiaroscuro that gave them drama and great realism. The second generation took inspiration from Jusepe de Ribera, known as Spagnoletto. He was a Valencian painter who developed his own strand in the footsteps of Caravaggio: tenebrism. As the name suggests, Ribera's subjects radiate an intense darkness. Youth Tempted by the Vices painted by Luca Giordano is a clear example of Neapolitan art and its influences from the XVII century.

Luca Fapresto, the quickest Neapolitan painter

Luca Giordano was born in Naples in 1634, the son of a painter, with whom he began his training. He became one of the greatest exponents of 17th-century Neapolitan painting. He had the nickname Luca Fapresto, which means Luca is quick, because of his quickness in creating his works. Giordano was able to rework all the stimuli he received and build a career spanning more than 50 years. His artistic production numbers thousands of works. He worked on public and private commissions in the most important cultural centres, such as Venice, Rome, Florence and Madrid. Like any artist worthy of the name, Luca Giordano's production goes through phases.

Giordano began to make a name for himself in the footsteps of his master Ribera, and he studied the biggest artists from the previous century, like Tiziano, Michelangelo and then Rubens. In his early artistic maturity (1660-1680) he was influenced by the Neo-Venetian school, leaving behind Ribera's tenebrism to make room for a new use of light and colour. His works focused on mythological and allegorical subjects in this period, close to a still classicist and rubensian matrix.

The allegory of life through mythology

Youth Tempted by the Vices is a work dating from 1664, painted during a stay in Venice. The author narrates through an allegory, the life of a young hero through various figures from Greco-Roman mythology. In the centre, there is a boy, the Youth, protected by Minerva, the goddess of wisdom. She encircles him from above with her shield. The other figures in the composition are the Vices, threats veiled in flattering behaviour, coveting the hero's virtues. Above left, Venus descending from her chariot, sprays from her breast, towards the young man, the poisoned milk of love, diverted by Minerva. Below is Kronos holding the world on his shoulders and brandishing a scythe and hourglass, symbols of death and transience. Inside the globe, there is a cupid, a reference to the last verse of the Divine Comedy: " Amor che move il sole e le altre stelle".

At the Young Man's feet is Siphilus, a shepherd whose name refers to Syphilis, a venereal disease that spread in the 15th century, causing various physical scabrousness, from which the shepherd also suffers. To the side is a dog licking wine poured by a satyr to the right of the young man. The figure behind the satyr is Bacchus, the god of inebriation (Bacchus was one of Caravaggio's favourite subjects). At the upper right is Love, ready to shoot an arrow at the young man. Today the work is located in the Städel Museum, in the German town of Frankfurt am Main.

Connections across the time

Giordano took inspiration for his work from Rubens' Flemish master, Otto van Veen, who proposed the same subject matter as the Neapolitan painter and many others. With the new century, in artistic and literary works, artistic subjects took on a moralising aesthetic in which form and content are complementary. In fact, in 1699, Telemachus was published, an epic about the Greek hero written by François Fénélon. The cover of the book features a depiction very similar to Giordano's painting. According to mythology, Telemachus was the only son of Odysseus and Penelope. His name means he who fights afar and indeed, he set out in search of his father under the protection of Minerva, the Greek goddess of wisdom and war. In Fénélon's transposition, she admires Telemachus' wisdom and virtue. Thus she develops an obsessive carnal passion for him. Her love for him leads her to make him immortal so that they can be together forever.

Youth in Neapolitan style...

Among the current leading figures from Naples, there is Paolo Sorrentino. The filmmaker presented the film Youth - La Giovinezza at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. The film, stars Michael Caine in the role of Fred Ballinger, a composer at the end of his career. The artist is no longer able to make music since his wife's hospitalisation for dementia and even refuses to work for the Queen of England.

Set in a Swiss resort, the plot tells the lives of several characters who share a common sense of loss and abandonment towards their careers and feelings. Central is the relationship between Fred and his friend Mick Boyle, a director struggling with his last film The Last Day of My Life, an artistic testament.

While the former lives in total apathy, the latter in an illusory joy. It vanishes when the actress he wanted as a leading lady rejects him for more profitable projects. After telling his friend to take back his life and stop surviving, Mick commits suicide by throwing himself off the balcony. Fred, who appears to be in his usual apathetic state, experiences a profound redemption that leads him to visit his wife in Venice and accept that the songs he composed for her will be sung at the English court. Fred rediscovers the lost youth that Mick so longed for.

...through the Arts

In Luca Giordano's work Youth Tempted by the Vices and in Paolo Sorrentino's film Youth - La giovinezza, youth emerges as a universal and fascinating theme. Both artists capture the essence of this period, in which one has the beauty and strength to face the world.
With his painting, Giordano expresses the dynamism and the poignant temptation to give in to vices during youth. Sorrentino, in his film, instead explores the lives of two elderly friends, revisiting their youth full of passion and ambition.
Both highlight how time passes, taking away the virtues of this phase of life. But what emerges is the depth of their memories and experiences. Giving in to vices or being overzealous in one's values during the age of prosperity most often leads to a life of regret and remorse.

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Youth tempted by Vices | Neapolitan allegory of life

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Youth Tempted by the Vices painted by Luca Giordano is a clear example of Neapolitan art and its influences from the XVII century.

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Material/Technique

Camillo Guarino Guarini was not the first to work on a project on the Chapel of the Holy Shroud. Before him, the Savoys had commissioned Carlo and Amedeo Castellamonte and Bernardino Quadri. But finally, they entrusted it in full to the architect-priest Guarini, who used it as an outlet for all of his devotion, imagination, ingenuity, and ardent love of architecture.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

The chapel is located between the apse of the Dome of Turin and Palazzo Reale.

A towering house of cards

From the outside one can appreciate only the conically shaped lantern, vaguely Asian in design, dotted with small urns that bring to mind the "pseudo-sepulchral" function of the structure.

Image courtesy of Guilhem Vellut, via Flickr

The interior, on the other hand, develops an immersive and experiential journey starting from two lateral portals at the high altar of the Dome. Here appear two flights of low steps, made from the same black marble as the walls and vaults. The stairs arrive at two vestibules, both black as well, opening onto the circular plan of the chapel. This is composed of five chapels, but what is most noticeable is the change in color.

A theatrical impact on the viewer

One enters into a gray space that becomes lighter and lighter as the gaze raises towards the cupola's internal summit, which consists of a succession of six registers of arches becoming progressively smaller. They result in a telescopic effect that creates the illusion of stretched dimensions of the lantern. The impression is that of finding oneself in a towering house of cards.

Image courtesy of Guilhem Vellut, via Flickr

The journey from the earthly realm's darkness towards the extraordinary light that glares through the cupola's windows is highly symbolic. With his Chapel of the Holy Shroud, Guarini demonstrated his esteem for gothic architecture, which his contemporaries then denigrated. Furthermore, he declared his allegiance to the renewed architecture that took inspiration from Francesco Borromini. Unlike the Maestro, however, Guarini bends architecture to his own taste, favoring, as R. Wittkower says, "intentional incongruities and surprising dissonances."

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The Chapel of the Holy Shroud is a journey towards the light - Hypercritic

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Location of the visited exhibition Material/Technique Camillo Guarino Guarini was not the first to work on a project on the Chapel of the Holy Shroud. Before him, the Savoys had commissioned Carlo and Amedeo Castellamonte and Bernardino Quadri.

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https://hypercritic.org/collection/the-sicilian-moors-head-tragic-love-or-story-of-betrayal/

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The Sicilian Moor’s Head | Tragic love or story of betrayal? - Hypercritic

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The “Moor’s head” and his beloved are widespread in Sicily since the 18th-century and become popular and iconic, also in TV series.

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Soap Bubbles 's painter Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin is one of the most famous 18th-century painters. He is best known for his pastel portraits, still lifes, and everyday life scenes, with a particular preference for childhood games.

His paintings are the embodiment of a graceful, carefree, sometimes superficial way of seeing things: a life in pastel tones. It is not the painter's vision of the world in general, but a vision of daily human life. And it is so fleeting and ephemeral that it remains on the surface of things.

An impermanence of life metaphor

Soap Bubbles is a perfect example. A childhood game that creates perfect spheres of pure inconsistency, doomed to vanish in a few seconds, becomes a metaphor for the impermanence of life. Seen from a modern perspective, there can be a second key to childhood weariness and genuineness. However, this poetic vision of children did not belong to Chardin's era. The association between soap bubbles and themes of some kind of burden, as in the transience of life, generates an oxymoron that would develop from the nineteenth century.

An artistic and psychedelic test

Even Disney cartoons used soap bubbles to give a moral message to their viewers. An example is The little elephant finds himself drunk by mistake, in his mentor mouse company. He then starts fantasizing and playing with the soap bubbles produced by Dumbo's trunk. After a few artistic attempts, the alcohol takes effect, and the big bubbles turn into giant pink elephants. Thus, the visionary nightmare begins to unfold in an artistic and psychedelic test. It was a considerable skill for a cartoon from 1941.
Today, November 2, 2020, we celebrate Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, his 321st birthday, with his carefree and light-hearted Soap Bubbles in these hard times.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/ Public domain.

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Chardin's Soap Bubbles portrays life in pastel tones - Hypercritic

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Location of the visited exhibition Soap Bubbles 's painter Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin is one of the most famous 18th-century painters. He is best known for his pastel portraits, still lifes, and everyday life scenes, with a particular preference for childhood games. His paintings are the embodiment of a graceful, carefree, sometimes superficial way of seeing things: a life in pastel tones.

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The Tête à Tête painting is part of a series of six canvases that bear the title Marriage A-la- Mode. In the decade before the creation of this series, the painter William Hogarth had turned his disillusioned gaze to other realities of the first half of the 18th century. Hehad therefore painted another series dedicated to the career of a prostitute, and the career of a libertine: A Harlot's Progress and A Rake's Progress.

The artist's attitude

His attitude towards the events of the day is openly critical. However, the painter's negative opinion does not seem to be too judgemental towards the protagonists of his series, but rather towards the society around him, which he sees as corrupt. In his view, it crushes the characters, leading them to make the worst possible choices in life, which lead to squalid conclusions.

These series followed the protagonists from ascent to death, unconsciously anticipating the Hero's journey stages, identified by anthropologist and comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell during the twentieth century and then adopted in . The canvases are full of details that intuitively lead the viewer to understand what is happening and to fill in the gaps in the narrative that lead from one canvas to another.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Common/Public Domain

The paintings' legacy

In front of the two newlyweds, an old and disappointed bureaucrat leaves the room, holding the unpaid bills. This set of stories inspired Stanley Kubrick for Barry Lyndon, where he openly quoted this painting in a scene. The movie is full of references from other eighteenth-century English painters besides Hogarth, such as Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds.

In this case, the scene happens after the little Bryan Patrick Lyndon died falling off his horse. The protagonist is devastated and this feeds his addiction to alcohol and gambling even more. The pose in which Kubrick captures Barry Lyndon is identical to one of the young husbands in the painting. At the same time, other common elements include the fireplace, the upturned chair, and the row of bottles on the cabinet, which in the film acquire more meaning referring to the alcoholism of the protagonist. The atmosphere of derelicts abandoned to vice has been impeccably re-proposed by Kubrick, succeeding in reconstructing the apparently perfect but inherently rotten aristocracy in The Age of Enlightenment, inspired by Hogarth's paintings.

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The Tête à Tête time in a Marriage A-la-Mode - Hypercritic

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Location of the visited exhibition The Tête à Tête painting is part of a series of six canvases that bear the title Marriage A-la- Mode . In the decade before the creation of this series, the painter William Hogarth had turned his disillusioned gaze to other realities of the first half of the 18th century.

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https://hypercritic.org/collection/the-nightmare-in-the-meanderings-of-the-subconscious-of-fussli-1781/

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The Nightmare | In the meanderings of the subconscious of Füssli - Hypercritic

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Füssli depicted "The Nightmare" in 1782. It shows the frightening parts of unconscious, nightmares, that still attract the modern observer.

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Goya’s White Duchess | Fashion, naïve art, and magic realism - Hypercritic

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The White Duchess by Goya shows how fashion was in 1795, and it can be seen as naïve art and magic realism avant la lettre.

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The sleep of reason produces monsters | When reason leaves the imagination

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https://hypercritic.org/collection/the-sleep-of-reason-produces-monsters-when-reason-leaves-the-imagination/

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Location of the visited exhibition

One can expect anything from a court portrait painter, except for a caricature inside an official painting. And yet this is exactly what Francisco Goya, Pintor de Cámera of the king achieved under the reign of Carlo IV, beginning in 1789.

In Charles IV of Spain and His Family Goya depicts the entire royal family, distancing himself however from the classic prototype of court paintings that tended to give their subjects a certain aura of beauty and dignity where, at times, it was completely absent. The painter does not force himself to beautify, but rather leans in the opposite direction, turning faces into caricatures, adding grotesque connotations and monkey-like features.

A satirical gaze

He covers the characters with medals and drapes them in sumptuous garments in the same spirit, revealing all the superficiality of which this court was guilty. The only ones safe from Goya's satirical brush are the children, whom Goya portrayed faithfully. In fact, he considered them innocent and still uncorrupted by the world and by the royal label.

Going beyond the satirical gaze that Goya turned on the family of Carlo IV, one can notice how his work of bitter revision involved the painting itself. The portrait is the caricature of another masterpiece realized a century and a half earlier for the Spanish court. Continuing his prank, Goya doesn't hide his homage to by Diego Velazquez. Confirming it is the self-portrait of the painter himself in the act of painting, with the detail of the canvas seen from behind, just like in the piece by Velazquez.

An occasionally true story

Presented with these grotesque portraits, it's surprising how Goya's clients didn't object: a rare case in which the rulers themselves accepted political satire. This is because the opulent, ostentatious clothes and shiny medals depicted in the painting attracted the royals, confirming the obtuseness Goya had seen in them.

If Charles IV of Spain and His Family were a fable, it would be, without a doubt, The Emperor's New Clothes. This is the story of a king so vain that he doesn't realize he's been made the butt of a terrible joke by two trickster tailors. A current-day correspondence to this painting could be the TV show (whose tagline is "an occasionally true story"). This show reimagines the story of Catherine the Great through paradoxical and harsh parody.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/ Public Domain

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Charles IV of Spain and His Family hides a rulers caricature - Hypercritic

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Location of the visited exhibition One can expect anything from a court portrait painter, except for a caricature inside an official painting. And yet this is exactly what Francisco Goya, Pintor de Cámera of the king achieved under the reign of Carlo IV, beginning in 1789.

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https://hypercritic.org/collection/canova-perseus-with-the-head-of-medusa-the-different-points-of-view-of-a-myth/

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When Antonio Canova visited the excavations of the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in 1779, the ancient Greco-Roman art fascinated the artist. This trip made an indelible impression on his approach to sculpture, making him probably the most famous and talented of the artists of the Neoclassical school. It also influenced the way he portrayed his subjects, and there are often mythological characters who appear in his works. Among the many myths sculpted by Canova is that of Perseus and Medusa, the Greek hero who decapitated the gorgon with the gaze that turned to stone any that looked at her.

Antonio Canova, and the Neoclassical style

Antonio Canova was born in Possagno in the Venetian Republic in November 1757. Aged five, he was placed in the care of his grandfather Pasino, a stonecutter by trade, who steered him to the workshop of Giuseppe Bernardi-Torretti in Pagagnano d'Asolo, and thence to Venice. Here Canova began attending the Accademia del Nudo and opened his first workshop. Among his first commissioned relevant works there are Orpheus and Eurydice (1776) and Daedalus and Icarus (1779) - both on display at the Correr Museum in Venice.

A sculpture, the desire of many

Countess Waleria Tarnowska, the nineteenth-century Polish painter and patron of the arts, said of him:

I saw the great Canova! I saw him amidst his glory, surrounded by his masterpieces...simple, modest, he seems to ignore the fact that he has become immortal.

Determined to have at least one work by Canova, in 1804 she and her husband commissioned from the artist a marble version of Perseus with the Head of Medusa. This was not the first version of this work, as Canova had first made one in plaster in 1795, and then one in marble in 1801. This initial sculpture, the Apollo of the Belvedere, which Emperor Napoleon 1 spoliated, inspired the artist. Pope Pius VII bought the first marble version of Perseus with the Head of Medusa for 2,000 zecchini. The French tribune Onorato Duveyriez had originally commissioned the work, but the Pope decided to purchase it. He did so to compensate for the loss of the works of art the French army stole. And in this way the Perseus statue rested on the plinth that belonged to the Apollo of the Belvedere.

Although the artist had been careful to make the head of the gorgon hollow, its weight caused concern. It was thought that Perseus' arm was unable to support the weight of Medusa's head and that, if it gave way, the head would fall and ruin the floors of the Tarnowska Palace in Dzików. So when the artist sent the marble statue, he also sent a plaster copy of Medusa's head by itself. So the artist allowed the Counts to replace the head with this lighter plaster version. If they had opted for this solution, the counts could have reused the marble head as a ghostly lantern, and so it is therefore probable that Canova finished Medusa's head so that it could be placed on a flat surface.
For this reason, the iconography of Canova's head differs from those reproduced by other artists in that it does not appear dripping and bloody. If one thinks of the one Caravaggio depicted in the work Shield with the Head of Medusa or the head of Medusa supporting Benvenuto Cellini's bronze Perseus, one can see that these are dripping with blood. Like Canova's Perseus, Cellini's Perseus also has special features. Behind the nape of Perseus' neck hides another work of art, the artist's self-portrait.

In the end, the Tarnowskas decided not to change the statue. They did not replace the plaster head with a marble one but preferred to change the location of the statue, instead. So the countess placed the statue on her father's landed estate in Horochów. Today the work is located at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where the famous Met Gala occurs.

The myth of Perseus, the birth of a hero

Perseus was the son of Danae, who was the only daughter of Ancrisius and Aganippe, king and queen of Argos. Worried, King Ancrisius consulted the Oracle of Delphi to know what fate awaited his kingdom, but it gave him an unexpected answer. Danae would have a son who would achieve glory but would kill him. So Ancrisius locked his daughter in a tower, hoping to circumvent the prophecy. Nevertheless, Danae conceived a son with the god Zeus. He, in the form of a shower of gold, managed to enter the tower through a crack in the roof. Frightened by the Oracle, the king locked Danae and the baby Perseus in a wooden box and abandoned them in the sea. The chest reached the island of Seriphus, where a fisherman rescued it. He was a Ditti, the brother of the overbearing king of the island, Polidette. As the years passed, Polidette fell in love with Danae. The king tried to convince her to marry him, but Danae never returned his love.

Perseus and Medusa, heroes and monsters

King Polidette wanted to drive Perseus away, so he devised a plan and announced that he wanted to get married to Hippodamia. He wanted as a wedding gift a horse from each of the guests. Perseus, mortified that he did not own a horse, promised Polidette whatever he wanted. He made this promise to him on the condition that he would no longer seduce his mother Danae. So Polidette asked Perseus to bring him as a gift the head of one of the three Gorgons, Medusa.
To accomplish this feat, the boy had to obtain three things: the winged sandals of Mercury (Hermes) to move faster, the kibisis, a magic bag in which to put the severed head of the Gorgon and the kunè, Pluto's ( Hades) helmet that makes one invisible. The goddess had also given Perseus a shield, shining like a mirror, so that he could only look at Medusa through her reflection. The god Vulcan (Hephaestus), on the other hand, gave him a diamond sickle with which to cut off Medusa's head.

To obtain the three objects Perseus had to find the Stygian Nymphs. They lived in a place known only to the , so he bargained with them and obtained from the Nymphs the three objects. Then, Perseus headed for the land of the Hyperboreans. In this place, nature is cold, a sinister grey colour and the forest into which Perseus set out was full of people who Medusa had petrified. Once he found the gorgon, the boy managed to defeat her thanks to the objects he obtained. When he decapitated her, a Pegasus and Chrysaor, a giant son of Medusa, sprang from Medusa's neck. Medusa's blood also had magical properties. That which dripped from the left vein was a deadly poison, while that which leaked from the right vein was an antidote capable of resurrecting the dead.

The myth of Medusa, the redemption of the monster

Medusa is one of the three Gorgon sisters, whom in the most ancient representations artists depicted as monstrous women. They had golden wings, bronze hands and snakes for hair. Their faces were chubby, sometimes also covered by a short beard, their mouths wide and with large fangs. Over time, these mythological figures became embellished, but always keeping the characteristic snakes in place of hair.

According to some authors such as Ovid, Hesiod and Apollodorus, Medusa was not always a monster, quite the contrary. According to these authors, Medusa was a beautiful maiden that the goddess Athena transformed as a punishment. Medusa is said to have lain with Poseidon in one of the temples dedicated to the goddess. In some versions of the tale, it is said that Medusa's beauty abducted Poseidon and that the god, to anger Athena, raped the maiden in her temple. However, Athena did not punish Poseidon, but Medusa. The goddess gave her the appearance of a monster that would turn anyone who looked into her eyes into stone. Other versions of the myth, however, say that the goddess would have turned the maiden only because she had dared to compete with her in beauty.

In 2008, the artist Luciano Garbati created his version of the Perseus and Medusa myth Medusa with the Head of Perseus. In this sculpture, the artist turns the myth upside down, representing the gorgon holding the head of Perseus. Garbati gives voice to Medusa, who has always been called a monster, giving this character a different ending to the traditional one also represented by Canova. Redemption for a woman who not only suffered violence but also incurred the unjust wrath of a goddess.

The modern version of an ancient myth

There are many references to the mythological figure of Medusa in Pop culture. From video games, such as Assassin's Creed Odyssey and God of War, where the gorgon is one of the enemies to be defeated, to books such as Athena's Child where author Hannah Lynn proposes a version of the Medusa myth different from the one we all know. There is also no shortage of references in TV series, such as Ajax, the gorgon boy from's Wednesday series. Medusa, however, is also one of the characters in Percy Jackson and the Olympian Gods, a collection of five fantasy books by Rick Riordan. The eponymous films The Lightning Thief (2010) and The Sea of Monsters (2013) were inspired by these. Riordan himself also announced the release of a TV series in 2024 on the Disney+ platform, which would be inspired by the first book The Lightning Thief.

In the movie Percy Jackson and the Olympian Gods, Thief of Lightning (2010), Uma Thurman plays the role of Medusa. If in Kill Bill the actress plays the role of a woman who takes revenge for the evil done to her by killing and beheading, in Percy Jackson it is she who suffers this same fate. Just as in the myth, the protagonist Percy, like the Greek hero of the same name, decapitates the gorgon, but a smartphone plays a key role in this scene. This acts as a mirror, a black mirror, a modern version of the shield that the goddess Athena gave to Perseus so that he could kill Medusa by looking only at her reflection.

The myth of Perseus and Medusa over the centuries has been interpreted in a different ways by artists. The public was able to see different facets of these two mythological characters, and how each artist tells the same story in different ways, each with their own authorial characteristic. Faced with all these different versions of the same myth, from Canova's classic, Garbati's redemption, to finish with Rionard's modern one, we cannot but ask ourselves: who is the villain?

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Perseus with the Head of Medusa | The different points of view of a myth - Hypercritic

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Among the many myths sculpted by Canova is that of Perseus and Medusa, the Greek hero who decapitated the gorgon with the gaze that turned to stone any that looked at her.

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In 1822 the French painter Théodore Géricault, one of the greatest representatives of Romanticism in France, produced one of his best-known and most poignant paintings, Portrait of a Woman Suffering from Obsessive Envy (or The Hyena of the Salpêtrière). The painting is part of a series of ten portraits of the alienated, of which, however, only five are known, including the one mentioned above: A Woman Addicted to Gambling, A Child Snatcher, A Kleptomaniac, and A Man Suffering from Delusions of Military Command. The Portraits of the Insane were made between and the protagonists of the canvases are subjects imprisoned inside some asylums and suffering from various monomanias.

For the first time in the history of art, Géricault makes ordinary people, outcasts such as asylum patients, the protagonists, breaking away from the academic tradition that had up to then denied them their interest. The painter investigates the human aspect of their illness that confines these alienated people to being excluded from the social context and thus strikes the viewer in the soul through the strong expressiveness that characterizes these subjects.

Portrait of a Woman Suffering from Obsessive Envy

In the Portraits of the Insane, Géricault portrays patients of the female asylum at Salpêtrière and patients of the male asylums at Charenton and Bicȇtre. The conceptual centre of the work as a whole is madness and mental alteration and the way its devastating aspects can be captured on the faces of the patients. In particular, Géricault depicts psychiatric patients suffering from monomanias, a term derived from the Greek monos ("alone") and mania ("madness") and referring to a disorder of the mind manifested by obsessive attachment to something. The monomanias represented in the cycle in the portraits that have survived to the present are that of child abduction, playfulness, military command, kleptomania, and envy.

La Monomane de l'Envie, 1822-23. Image © Lyon MBA - Photo Alain Basset

Portrait of a Woman Suffering from Obsessive Envy is the most famous in the cycle and is preserved at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon. The painting depicts the monomania of envy or hatred of the good of others. The subject depicted is a half-length bust of an elderly woman dressed in worn and shabby clothes, a heavy brown coat, a shirt that can be glimpsed, and a red scarf. The woman has a white cap around her wrinkled face, grey hair, and small, red, mean eyes and she is looking at something outside the painting, in real life, her obsession. The woman is caught in her feeling of rancour, and her pale face stands out against the dark, solid-coloured background that sets her off.

The Mystery Behind Portraits

The Portrait of a Woman Suffering from Obsessive Envy and the series Portraits of the Insane to which it belongs have long been and continue to be the focus of complex critical debate. Indeed, it is not known with certainty, other than the precise date of composition, why they were created. In the catalogue raisonné by Charles Clément, biographer of Théodore Géricault, he refers to the cycle as ten " studies of alienated heads" and says it belonged to the psychiatrist Jean Georget, with whom Géricault was undergoing treatment due to the depressive state he was in as a result of overwork, and the disappointments he received from the failure of his greatest work, The Raft of the Medusa in 1819.

While it is known with certainty, however, that the paintings belonged to the psychiatrist who treated the painter, the reason for making them is not certain. Critics have formulated three hypotheses. K. Berger considers that the portraits served as teaching materials for Georget to lecture on pathology. For critic Aimé-Azam, the cycle of the alienated was a thank you for the doctor's treatment. Still others, believe that the painting cycle was given as a task to Géricault for therapeutic purposes.

The influence of psychiatric studies

For the portraits of the alienated, and in particular for the Portrait of a Woman Suffering from Obsessive Envy, Géricault drew inspiration from Georget's theories in his 1820 treatise De la folie: considérations sur cette maladie. Georget along with Jean-Étienne Dominique Esquirol, whose student he was, is one of the pioneers of modern psychiatry.

Esquirol, in fact, saw mental illness as an ailment of the body, like any other common illness, and instead rejected all those theological explanations that blamed the devil for madness. Moreover, as an advocate of physiognomy, he thought that illness could be diagnosed by physical appearance. According to this idea, the doctor had the artist Georges-Francoise Gabriel make 200 drawings of his patients. Georget is thought to have done the same with Géricault. Both psychiatrists, however, were pioneers in psychiatric science because they no longer regardedthe insane as individuals to be excluded and isolated but rather as ill people to be treated. Géricault's work, indeed, seems to stand for these new achievements of nineteenth-century psychiatry.

The Portrait of a Woman Suffering from Obsessive Envy is portrayed in the manner in which Dr. Georget describes the symptoms of this mania in his dissertation: " The blood circulation becomes more active; the blood pressure rises; the arteries of the head beat loudly; the eyes shine and are bloodshot."

Art on the side of the excluded

Just like The Portrait of a Woman Suffering from Obsessive Envy and the Portraits of the Insane , Todd Phillips' 2019 film has loneliness, madness, and marginalization at its centre. Based on the DC Comics character of the eponymous name, played by Joaquin Phoenix the film shows the human side of DC's most famous loon, just as Géricault shows the alienated portrayed caught in their human being. The painter by placing asylum patients at the centre of the scene in their fullest expressiveness thus denounces the social isolation to which they are subjected, which also in Joker becomes a trigger for uncontrolled madness. Like Géricault, Todd Phillips has placed the ill at the centre, restoring to him the dignity as an individual that he had lost.

Because of the use of pictorial art as a social denunciation, and of the high expressiveness and crudeness of such unusual and unconventional portraits, the Portraits of the Insane with The Portrait of a Woman Suffering from Obsessive Envy at the forefront, has left a strong mark on Western Art history, serving as a point of reference for the later current of Realism as well.

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Portrait of a Woman Suffering from Obsessive Envy | Géricault's Social Complaint - Hypercritic

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In the Portrait of a Woman Suffering from Obsessive Envy, Théodore Géricault places the outcasts at the center giving them dignity.

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https://hypercritic.org/collection/nuijen-shipwreck-artistic-vision-of-humanitarian-issue/

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Location of the visited exhibition

The artistic hand of the 19th-century Dutch painter Wijnand Nuijen created sensational landscapes. The son of a baker from The Hague, apprenticed as an artist aged twelve, he died aged twenty-six in 1839, yet in his short working life painted numerous land and seascapes, sparking comparisons between him and such masters of light and European Romanticism as William Mallord Turner and Richard Parkes Bonnington. There are many painters who, through plays of contrasts and colors, imprinted the majesty surrounding humankind on canvas. Influenced by his long-standing French colleagues, his production combines drama and peace. Nuijen's themes often refer to historical events in his homeland. The critics accused him of a daring use of colors, yet he focused more on the striking effect of the work than on the subject itself.
In Shipwreck off a Rocky Coast, painted in 1837, the use of is the vector through which the subject is interpreted. A shy sun among the clouds illuminates the survivors on dry land as if to comfort them. In the background, still at the mercy of the sea, the sinking ship can be glimpsed, barely reached by the light. This painting is a perfect example of man's powerlessness against Mother Nature.

The shipwreck, an ongoing tragedy

The use of color in Nuijen's Shipwreck is similar to William Turner's watercolors. The English artist had the nickname of the painter of light because he was able to exalt it in all its forms. He made the concept of the sublime his own: a feeling of terror and wonder nature unleashes in man. Turner, in fact, never hid his taste for tragedy, which he also takes up in The Shipwreck of Hope. A much more evocative title, compared to Nuijen's that lets the deep meaning of the work shine through, far beyond what is perceived through mere observation. Sheets of ice impetuously overlap, leaving no escape for a vessel venturing into the glacial meanders.

One of the most significant artistic representations of a shipwreck is The Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault. He was a French painter known for his theatricality and his taste for the horrid. The painting refers to a precise historical event: in 1816, a French frigate called Méduse wrecked off the coast of Mauritania. It was heading towards Senegal together with three other ships but broke away from them at an increased speed. The event cost the French court a scandal, as they published months later the account of a doctor who survived the tragedy. It dealt with how the climate of overwhelming despair led the shipwrecked people to cannibalism and suicide. Géricault studied post-mortem rigidity and storm development at length to be as accurate as possible in his work.

A contemporary view

At this moment in history, the sublime no longer exists, but in the eyes of those who decide to leave their lands, terror remains, albeit with a heart full of hope and the knowledge that the chances of reaching new shores are rare. Migration has characterized world history since ancient times and modern societies have developed thanks to it. In this era, the subject of the work would be the same, but instead of a wooden ship, there would be a dinghy or a makeshift boat. Almost every day, newspapers carry reports of people missing at sea. In February 2023, a shipwreck occurred on the Italian coast in Cutro, and months later, victims were still being found. In June 2023, hundreds of people died when an overcrowded trawler sunk in Greek waters, carrying migrants from Turkey to Italy.

Some months later the same year, a boat from Libya sank near Greece in June. At least 78 people died in the shipwreck; even then, authorities estimate that hundreds are missing.

New era, different kind of language

Setting out on a journey toward freedom and hope is a theme present in many works.
In 2021, released , a video game set in the dreamlike atmosphere of the 1990s. It takes the form of interactive travel literature, in which the protagonists want to leave their homeland, which has fallen to a totalitarian regime, in the hope of escaping to a better world. The video game simulates the escape experience in the first person, playing the role of a missing boy.

The video game's outcome falls to the player's choices, creating a new episode each time, and a shipwreck is one of the possible endings. Like two centuries ago, nature continues to be impetuous, but migration policies can play a fundamental role in order that this situation doesn't become a humanitarian odyssey.

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Nuijen's Shipwreck off a Rocky Coast | Artistic Vision of the humanitarian issue

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In Nuijen's Shipwreck off a Rocky Coast, a shy sun among the clouds illuminates the survivors on dry land as if to comfort them.

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Gustave Courbet, a French painter of the 1800s, was an exponent of French realism. The painter lived in the Romantic era and this influenced his work, but Courbet always tried to keep away from any stylistic definition. In his works, the artist represented the ideas, customs, and habits of his time, as he perceived them. Courbet did not want to limit himself to imitating nature, he did not want to paint for the sole purpose of aesthetics. Courbet aimed to immortalize living art.

For this reason, it was that he also took social issues to heart, aligning himself alongside the literature of realism with its strong connotations of social denunciation that saw Victor Hugo as its main exponent in France, with literary works of the caliber of Les Miserables.

The Stone Breakers, Gustave Courbet, 1849. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Courbetmoved to Paris in 1839 to study law, but during his stay in the French capital, the artist spent entire days in the Louvre, where he contemplated the works of artists such as Caravaggio, Diego Velasquez, and Harmenszoon van Rijn Rembrandt. In Paris, the artist also made friends with the intellectuals most hostile to the monarchical regime: the accursed poet Charles Baudelaire, the socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and the critic Jules Champfleury.

The Self-portrait

During his stay in Paris in 1843, Courbet painted a self-portrait entitled Le Désespéré, a work to which he was so attached that he took it with him when he was sent into exile in Switzerland in 1873 for taking part in the demolition of the Vendôme column during the Paris Comune.

The young Courbet portrays himself in the foreground, with his hands in his hair, his lips half-closed, and his eyes wide open looking straight at the viewer, breaking through the fourth wall.

The artist wanted to avoid depicting himself in a traditional pose, breaking the mold. As a revolutionary painter, Courbet wanted to make the bourgeoisie aware of a real feeling: despair.

Courbet's despair lies in the uncertainty for his future. Out of the academy, artists with a revolutionary style like his were left alone, with no perspective on what their artistic careers would be.

Thus the young man's expression represents his state of mind at the time and goes against the academic traditions of the austere, composed self-portrait.

Le Désespéré, Gustave Courbet, 1843. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

The self-portrait is in prevalence light in color, thanks to the light coming from the top left. This light then reflects off Courbet's white shirt and skin. The points of light create strong contrasts with the areas of shadow, echoing the works of the Dutch painters of the 17th century and Caravaggio's painting.

Salon des Refusés, the marginalized artists

During the second half of the 1800s, artists desired to break away from the rigid academic style. Art, thus, began to move towards a new current, Realism. Courbet was the greatest exponent of this movement. He also created the pictorial manifesto with the work The Stone Breakers. This work, in fact, has as its subject two men engaged in hard manual labor; represented here without epic or academic solemnity, but raw and poor.

An important step in the spread of this new realist movement was Courbet's participation in the Paris Salon

Salon, Academy and Refuses: the solitude of artists

Founded in 1667 and sponsored by the French government and the Academy of Fine Arts, the Paris Salon was the most important art exhibition in the Western world between 1748 and 1890. At the Salon, artists from the academy took part. Receiving a prize from the Salon guaranteed these artists a successful career. Courbet, managed to take part in the Salon for the first time in 1851, with his work Funeral at Ornans. Then in 1852 he entered The Bathers. This work scandalized the bourgeois public for the nude woman placed in the center of the painting. And so, in 1855, the Salon decided not to accept any more paintings by Courbet.

A Funeral At Ornans, Gustave Courbet, 1849-50. Wikipedia Public domain

With the Salon rejecting numerous works of art, there was a consistent change in the lives of emerging young artists. The Academies no longer protected these artists, so art galleries during the 1830s began to organize private exhibitions. They then were forced to produce works without having the certainty that these would be purchased. Courbet also had to organize his private exhibition, entitled The Pavilion of Realism. In 1863, the Salon jury rejected more than half of the paintings featured. Among them were works by the likes of Manet and Pisarro.

The Bathers Gustave Courbet, 1853. Wikipedia Public domain

The bourgeois class, with its classical taste, did not understand these artists; on the contrary, it attacked them. These young emerging artists were left alone and, to encourage them, there were only a few enlightened collectors, to whom they tried to sell their works day after day.

So the artists began to foment protests. These reached Emperor Napoleon III, who had traditional tastes, but also had the opinion of the people at heart. Numerous complaints came to the office of the emperor about the rejected works of art. So Napoleon III decided that the works of art would be exhibited, but elsewhere. So in 1863 the Salon des Refusés was born. The Salon des Refusés housed works of art rejected by the Salon, and it received more than a thousand visitors a day.

Solos, self-portrait of human

Solos, the American series launched by Amazon Prime Video and produced by David Weil, starring Oscar winners Morgan Freeman, Anne Hathaway, and Helen Mirren, is an anthology drama divided into seven episodes. Each episode is a Solos, a monologue, or a dialogue between the character and the technological version of himself (with the exception of the episode starring Morgan Freeman). But the title Solos also refers to the feeling of loneliness, one of the leitmotifs of the series. In fact, it is loneliness that accompanies the protagonists of these episodes.

Solos explore the various nuances of bonds in the human sphere. Over the course of these seven episodes, the protagonists' desperate need to connect with other people is highlighted.

The loneliness in the eyes of the protagonists is the same as that found in Courbet's gaze two centuries earlier. However, what Courbet felt was a collective feeling. A common feeling that belonged to the entire generation of young artists who were his contemporaries. And it is those frightened eyes, the gaze of a person experiencing a moment of existential fragility are as distant in time as they are close to humanity today.

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Courbet and the self-portrait of the solitary - Hypercritic

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Gustave Courbet, a French painter of the 1800s, was an exponent of French realism. The painter lived in the Romantic era and this influenced his work, but Courbet always tried to keep away from any stylistic definition. In his works, the artist represented the ideas, customs, and habits of his time, as he perceived them.

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The Pre-Raphaelite artist John Everett Millais painted Ophelia in London between 1851-1852, and it is now on display at the Tate Gallery, London.

The artist painted Ophelia in two different moments. Millais creates the background en plein air, inspired by the vegetation of Ewell (a place where he lived for five months, working on the canvas for eleven hours a day). The artist left a white space in the center incomplete. This to insert Ophelia, impersonated by the model and poet Elizabeth Siddal.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.

Ophelia, lying in a stream, is covered in flowers.

A tragic story

Elizabeth Siddal, the future wife of Millais' friend Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was the model who interpreted Ophelia. Millais had the model immersed in the bath of his apartment in Gower Street in London, to reproduce the drowning faithfully and to have the effect of the swelling of the dress immersed in water. This led Elizabeth to fall ill with terrible bronchitis, which permanently affected her health.

Ophelia as a Shakespearean character

The play depicts Ophelia, one of the main characters in Shakespeare's Hamlet. The girl's love for Hamlet makes her a victim of this because Ophelia believes that Hamlet does not return her feelings. He will negate his love for her in order not to involve her in Uncle Claudius' petty affairs. Later, Ophelia becomes insane as Hamlet, the man she loves, kills her father. The girl will then slip into a stream, and so taken by grief and madness, she lets herself drown.

The Pre-Raphaelites

Millais was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. That was an artistic association related to the current of Symbolism and Art Nouveau. This developed in Great Britain during the Victorian age. The term "Pre-Raphaelites" takes its name from the Renaissance artist Raffaello Sanzio. According to these artists, the Arts before him lived a flourishing and genuine period. After him, Art became polluted and corrupt. In fact, Pre-Raphaelites aimed to abolish the models of Victorian art, taking up the customs and traditions of a nostalgic past. The themes addressed by these artists were: biblical, literary, fairy-tale, historical, and social, with a particular focus on migration and work.

Melancholia, depression, and destruction

Millais' Ophelia's death is mentioned, as a true homage to the painter and Shakespeare's literary work, in the film Melancholia. It's a film from 201, a drama/fantasy movie, written and directed by Lars von Trier. The film was presented for the Palme D'Or at the 64th Cannes Film Festival. Kirsten Dunst, who portrayed the main character Justine, received the award for best female lead actress. In the film poster, Justine, lying in a stream in her wedding dress, plays the role of Ophelia. Symbol of love, defeated by pain. The film tells the story of two sisters, Justine and Claire. Their relationship is analyzed, as Earth is threatened by the planet Melancholia.

Melancholia is a metaphor for depression, the disease from which Justine suffers. The director has also suffered from the same disease. So this episode has drawn strong inspiration for the creation of the film. The play on words between the name of the planet, Melancholia, and Justine's pathology, creates parallels between depression and the end of the world. Just as Melancholia is going to crash down upon the Earth and destroy it, so depression is going to destroy the lives of the people who suffer from this pathology, and their families. Because for many families, depression represents the end of the world.

Melancholy, philosophers, planets, and artists

Blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile are the four humors that compose the human psyche, according to Greeks. The excess of black bile could generate melancholia. Aristotle argues in the Problems that "All extraordinary men excellent in philosophy, politics, poetry and the arts are manifestly melancholic". Marsilio Ficino will resume the thought of Aristotle, in 1489, in his work De vita triplici.

A gift of men born under the planet Saturn was melancholy, but this was not always the case. In the beginning, Mercury was the planet of artists, the planet of the God Hermes, creator of the arts. The change came with the revaluation of Ficino. So, from then on, the "saturnine temperament", which is dark and reflective, melancholic, became a characteristic of artists.

Melancholy, however, can lead to negative consequences, can produce anxiety attacks and depression. The latter can prove fatal, as in the case of Elizabeth Siddal. The poetess, in addition to health problems caused by bronchitis, suffered from a strong depression, caused by the loss of her son. In the end, the model and the subject of Millais' painting share the same fate: like Ophelia for the pain of her father's death, Elizabeth also committed suicide. For Elizabeth too, love, defeated by grief, turned into fatal madness.

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Ophelia | An artistic treaty on Melancholia - Hypercritic

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The Pre-Raphaelite artist John Everett Millais painted Ophelia in London between 1851-1852, and it is now on display at the Tate Gallery, London. The artist painted Ophelia in two different moments. Millais creates the background en plein air, inspired by the vegetation of Ewell (a place where he lived for five months, working on the canvas for eleven hours a day).

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Paul Gustave Doré was a French artist and printmaker, born in 1832. His body of work has succeeded in conditioning and influencing the Western world's artistic perspective, gaze and imagination.
When Doré worked on Dante's Divine Comedy, his fame was at its peak. His most remarkable ability is to immerse the viewer, who in this case is first and foremost a reader, in his world made up of landscapes that leave no room for emptiness. Doré shows with his illustrations the horror vacui in Dante's Divine Comedy.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain

A career at its peak

His fame as an engraver and illustrator nearly damaged his career, when he attempted to try out other art forms such as painting and sculpture. He never received any artistic recognition for these techniques, as his contemporaries in the mid-1800s, especially the French, preferred his illustrations.

Doré reached the apogee of his fame by combining drawings and literature. His artistic fortune focused on the illustrations of texts by contemporary writers of his time, such as Honoré Balzac, Edgar Allan Poe, Alfred Tennyson, and great classic authors, from Dante Alighieri and Miguel Cervantes to Ludovico Ariosto.
He also illustrated the , showing evidence of extreme compositional ability and great invention, proposing unpublished representations of passages from the Holy Scriptures.

Full-page illustrations

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Common/Public Domain

In the First Canto of Dante's Comedy, Doré leads the viewer's gaze through the play of chiaroscuro in the background. In doing so, he exploits the verticality of the trees and the diagonal of the ground to highlight the Poet figure with a sort of lay halo. This element is a clear homage to the art of Tintoretto and Rembrandt.

Towards the climax

The way Doré organizes his illustrations' elements is reminiscent of a chorus. He places each component carefully, composing a visual melody that points towards a goal, often the protagonist. It is as if Doré is playing the role of a conductor directing various voices and instruments toward a climax. This skill is reminiscent of Gioachino Rossini' s similar ability to create melodic and narrative tension by exploiting the chorus.

For example, in William Tell's finale, the composer bases the instrumental part on an endlessly repeating motif acting as a foundation, leaving no room for silence. From a succession of individual and different voices, Rossini builds the chorus that guides the audience to the finale.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain

What Rossini did in music, Doré realized in his illustrations, succeeding, like no artist before him, in rendering the concept of a finale in a clear visual way.

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Doré and the horror vacui in Dante's Divine Comedy - Hypercritic

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Paul Gustave Doré was a French artist and printmaker, born in 1832. His body of work has succeeded in conditioning and influencing the Western world's artistic perspective, gaze and imagination.When Doré worked on Dante's Divine Comedy , his fame was at its peak.

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Mårten Eskil Winge (1825-1896) was a 19th century Swedish painter. He was born in Stockholm and studied at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts after completing his studies as an student at the Uppsala Cathedral School in 1846. He became interested in the Norse sagas during his studies and painted several works dealing with this theme. In 1856, he became a pupil of the Swedish painter Johan Christoffer Boklund and later travelled from Düsseldorf to Paris. There Winge studied with the French history painter and teacher Thomas Couture and had the opportunity to visit the. Here, Winge copied The Three Kings in Bethlehem by Peter Paul Rubens. He returned to Sweden in 1863, where he became a member of the Academy of Arts and a professor. There he opened a painting school in his studio.

By including scenes from Norse mythology in his works, the artist helped to make it known in Sweden. Winge produced legendary and mythological Norse paintings around the 1860s, including Thor's Fight with the Giants (1872) and Loki and Sigyn (1863), both of which are preserved in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm.

The work Loki and Sigyn is an oil painting on canvas depicting the scene in which Loki receives punishment for his evil deeds. In this scene, Loki is naked, bound to a rock with the entrails of his son Narfi, conceived with the goddess Sigyn, with a serpent dripping its venom on his face. In the work, Sigyn wears a red robe, and she is draped in white cloth with a long veil covering her head. Legends say that Loki will remain in this terrible condition until Ragnarok, where he will fight in the final battle against the other gods.

Loki, the god of Mischief

Loki is a central figure in Norse mythology and is one of the most complex and ambiguous deities in this pantheon. He is known as the god of mischief, deception, and ingenuity.

Loki is related to several Norse gods, but his genealogy is complex due to his origins. In fact, he is the son of the giants Fàrbauti and Laufey but was adopted by Odin. For this reason, Loki is considered the half-brother of Thor, the god of thunder, and Baldr, a Norse deity often associated with the sun.
Thus, Loki is not considered one of the Aesir (main deities of Norse mythology) but rather a giant or a being of ambiguous origin. However, he is often considered an ally of the gods and part of their stories, as he often helps them out of difficult situations through cunning. He is known for his ability to transform himself into different forms. This allows him to deceive and confuse other gods or creatures. In some stories, he takes female or animal shape.

While this can help the other gods with his tricks and cunning, it can also cause problems and discord among them. Loki is famous for his ambiguous and often conflicting actions. These include the plan devised by Loki to cause the death of Baldr, who was one of the most beloved gods.

The prophecy of the end of the world, Ragnarok

Together with the giantess Angrboða, Loki generated the three famous monsters: the wolf Fenrir, the serpent Jormungandr and the hag Hel, who rules the world of the dead. These three beings together play an important role in the Norse eschatology, the prophecy of the end of the world, known as Ragnarok.

Ragnarok is a term in Norse mythology that refers to a cosmic event. This predicts the decline of the gods and the destruction of the world. Norse legends pass on this concept through sources such as the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda, important texts in Norse mythology and literature.
In Ragnarok, believers expect a series of catastrophic events to occur. These include the release of the wolf Fenrir, the challenge between the god Thor and the giant serpent Jormungandr, the fall of the main gods such as Odin and Thor, and the destruction of the world through a great conflict. After this event, the world is to be reborn, with a new generation of gods and a new beginning for the surviving humanity.

The concept of Ragnarok has often inspired Pop Culture, influencing literature, movies, Comics, video games, and other Media.

Sigyn, an example of love, fidelity and sacrifice

Sigyn is a figure in Norse mythology primarily associated with the god Loki; in fact, she was his wife and together they had two sons, Narfi and Vali.

One of the best-known stories related to Sigyn concerns her role during the myth of Loki's punishment. He was taken to a cave and bound to a rock with the entrails of his son Narfi, who was killed by his brother Vali. On him was a poisonous snake, whose venom dripped on him. The god, because of the pain, shuddered so loudly that the earth shook. Sigyn stood beside Loki to hold a bowl under the snake so as to collect the poison to relieve her husband's pain. However, from time to time he had to move away to empty the bowl, and then the venom dripped onto Loki, causing him terrible suffering.
Sigyn's story is often seen as an example of marital fidelity and sacrifice, for despite the suffering inflicted on her husband, she remained by his side doing her best to ease his pain.

The comics variant of the Norse god

Loki first appeared as a comic book character in published by Timely Comics, now Marvel Comics, in August 1949 as a member of the Olympian gods exiled to the Underworld. His appearance was different from that of the current Loki. His image was reminiscent of the traditional Devil, with fiery red hair and a fuchsia suit. What gave this character popularity was the horror comic series Journey into Mystery where Loki was the main character from volume no. 622 to no. 645. Other solo series were then dedicated to this character, including Loki: Agent of Asgard (2013), Vote Loki (2016), and Loki (2019).

Giving a face on the small and big screens to the Norse God in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is actor Tom Hiddleston, among them the TV series conceived by Michael Waldron for Disney+. The first season of this series, which premiered in June 2021, consists of 6 episodes in which Loki collaborates with the Time Variance Authority organisation to correct the timeline and stop a greater threat. Loki thus ends up hunting Sylvie ( Sophia Di Martino), a female variant of himself, across different timelines.

The opening theme song of this series has a special feature, it fully captures one of the main characteristics of the god of deception, in fact she is also a shape-shifter!

Loki 2, the end of the wait, the second season is here!

Kevin Wright, executive producer of the series, revealed that playing a significant role in the storyline will be Jonathan Majors, who will play Victor Timely, a variant of Kang the Conqueror. Victor Timely was introduced in the post-credit scene of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. In the final scene of the first season, Sylvie stabbed He Who Remains, a variant of Kang, causing chaos in the universe. The Loki creative team is excited to include Timely in the storyline, promising an important role for the character.

The figure of Loki has thus been the subject of diverse and fascinating interpretations throughout history. The complexity of this character is often associated with human ambiguity and fickleness. The story of the Norse God depicted by Winge in the 19th century is now available with his MCU-produced variant on Disney +, and the god of deception is back. In what timeline will his new adventures take place?

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Loki and Sigyn | Norse gods through different timelines - Hypercritic

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The work Loki and Sigyn is an oil-on-canvas painting by Mårten Eskil Winge in 1863 depicting the scene in which Loki receives his punishment for his evil deeds.

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The French artist Paul Gauguin, the painter of the Tropics, the leader of symbolism and the precursor of Fauvism, has until today remained unclassified. His creativity flourished in many domains, amongst which are painting, sculpture, engraving, and writing. Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? is a painting that summarizes Gaugin's artistic ideas and reflects his tragic quest for paradise.

The doomed painter of the tropics

Paul Gauguin's tragic life story is the consequence of a series of decisions pushing himself further into the myth he created around the concept of the Gauguin was a talented businessman, and he married a Danish woman with whom he had many children. His passion and talent in art slowly came to trouble this perfect bourgeois couple.

In 1879, at the age of thirty-one, Gauguin exhibited his paintings with the Impressionists at the invitation of Camille Pissarro and Edgar Degas.

The Impressionist group gradually divided into stylistic trends. The first were supporters of a naturalist style of painting which reflected the immediate sensations. Like Pissarro, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, they painted the slightest light variations, which allowed them to capture the instant in the object itself. A second group defended a more constructed type of painting like Paul Cézanne. For them, the structure is dominant, even though neither proportions nor mathematical perspectives were respected. The third group took one step further by applying a scientific approach, like George Seurat and Paul Signac. They developed the technique of pointillism, dots of pure colors reconstructing an image in the eye of the viewer. Gauguin situated himself between the diluted visions of the first and the constructive force of the seconds.

His success in painting stirred financial issues in his marital life. However, he was sure that painting could save him. To push it further, he decided to reconnect to his true nature, to live in an untamed world.

The quest for the savage

After that, he went on exploring the rural universe of Brittany, fascinated with this peaceful world, as if stuck in time. He ventured into Latin America before deciding to live in Oceania. There, he wanted to live his utopia, to dedicate his life to sensuality, joy, and to creation. In effect, he wrote to a friend that in Oceania life is cheap and he would not have any Europeans around. He would live like a lord with his small fortune and a tidy workshop.

This attitude revealed the orientalist ideas that influenced his view of the world. In 1979, Edward W. Said developed the concept of Orientalism to criticize the discourse held by Western painters and intellectuals in their portrayal of other cultures as naive, exotic and living in a backward society. This manufactured portrait of the otherness stood in opposition to the Western world, more rational, modern and essentially materialistic.

In his defense, Gauguin learned about the local culture, which offered him a source of creativity. For instance, he studied the Tahitian stories of genesis, the legends and mythical ancestors of the Maori. The artist was truly enchanted with this universe, and hence he painted fantastical scenes mixed with the daily routines of Tahitian life.

Gauguin returned to Paris to sell his production of sixty-six paintings, accompanied with personal notes. However, Parisians found his art too bright and barbarian. Pissarro even accused Gauguin of looting the savages of Oceania. As a consequence of the struggles to find recognition for his art in Paris, Gauguin definitively retreated to Tahiti for good.

Looking for the big picture

Gauguin painted Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? in Tahiti. The painting was created during a period of great personal crisis for the artist. Indeed, 1897 was a particularly dark year for Gauguin. He was accumulating health problems and mounting debts. He also learned that his daughter died of pneumonia.

Gauguin concentrated his energy to complete this large painting, sumptuous and enigmatic. In a creative outburst, he achieved this before attempting suicide. This masterpiece resumes the philosophy and the aesthetics of the artist. In other words, it constitutes a pictorial testament of his ideas.

The viewer needs to read the painting from right to left, where the cycle of life goes on from birth to death, under the indifferent gaze of the blue deity. The baby and the elder women represent these two stages respectively, each at one corner of the canvas. In between, the scenes of adulthood unfold with Gauguin's typical subjects: reclining nudes, totems, and intense contrasting colors of yellow, purple and blue.

Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain

Symbolism: artistic otherworldly visions

The Symbolist movement tends to favor the fantastic and the imaginary over reality. Depicting the real was less important than showing emotions like anxiety, sin, love, death and the unknown. Moreover, Symbolists were interested in exploring mysticism, spirituality and dreams. Yet, they were also preoccupied with the search for the real universal truth. In this painting, Gauguin raises mystical questions that troubled many symbolists.

During the last years of his life, Gauguin studied religions to find answers to the mysteries of the universe. He constituted a personal mythology, combining Buddhist philosophy, his Catholic education and animist beliefs from native Polynesian culture. His symbolist artwork explores the line between the visible and the invisible. It expresses the inner world of visions, emotions, and dreams. Certainly, this painting offers different interpretations of the mystery of life. However, its ambiguous symbols still leave the questions of the title unanswered.

Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? was exhibited some months later in Gallery Vollard in Paris, without much success. In the end, Gauguin died having the feeling of being misunderstood. Similar to his fellow friend Van Gogh, they were painters unrecognized by the public of their time. And indeed, Gauguin remained for a long time perceived in France as a damned creator, a prisoner of his own myth.

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Paul Gauguin's pictorial testament - Hypercritic

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The French artist Paul Gauguin, the painter of the Tropics, the leader of symbolism and the precursor of Fauvism, has until today remained unclassified. His creativity flourished in many domains, amongst which are painting, sculpture, engraving, and writing. Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?

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Artistic revolutions: Cubist inspirations in One Piece | Hypercritic

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Art is an ever-evolving motion. Cubism has evolved from Picasso to One Piece, the most watched anime in the world.

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Between 1880 to 1901, the Swiss Symbolist painter Arnold Böcklin created five versions of his most famous work, which is entitled Isle of the Dead. During World War II, Allied bombing partially destroyed the fourth version, which had been acquired by the industrial magnate Baron Heinrich Thyssen. So he painted a fifth. The third one was notoriously acquired by one of Bocklin's German admirers, Adolf Hitler. So today, there still remain the four versions, which hang in museums in Berlin, Leipzig, Basel, and New York City.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

The first three versions of the painting were done in the English Cemetery in Florence, where one of Bocklin's daughters is buried. By the mid-thirties, the painting had become popular enough that the Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov wrote in his 1936 novel Despair that they could be found in "every Berlin home."

Böcklin had originally given the title A Quiet Place to the first version of the painting, but this was changed when the art dealer Fritz Gurlitt commissioned the third version, as well as the first, and then gave it the title Die Toteninsel, or Isle of the Dead. All the versions of the work depict the same scene, with a few variations. A small rowing boat is entering what appears to be a water-gate and jetty on an island which is a cemetery, which is identifiable in the picture by the presence of cypress trees. These symbolize death and mourning. On the boat, a figure dressed entirely in white stands, waiting.

Art, symbol, and emotion

Although Bocklin provided little in the way of explanation as to the theme of the picture, suggesting only that it was reminiscent of a dream, the striking allegory and easily comprehensible historical and mythological subject would suggest Death, Life, Purity, the Afterlife, Redemption. The Symbolist Movement liked to concentrate on strongly evocative contexts, and focus on transcendent subjects which had a broad, psychological and symbolic appeal. In this manner, they had much in common with the work on dream interpretation carried out by psychoanalysts and psychologists Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, active at much the same time as the Symbolists.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Anxieties of the Symbolist Movement

Highlighted by writers such as Guillaume Apollinaire, and Charles Baudelaire, and artists ranging from Gauguin to Klimt and Munch, the late nineteenth-century Symbolist Movement focused on the use of abstract and metaphorical language and images to represent absolute truth. It was in part a reaction to the overly literal interpretations of realism and naturalism. For their part, the figurative arts aspect of the movement tended to turn the visual material towards the restlessness of the soul, relying on dreamlike visions and subterranean and microscopic worlds. Such is, for example, the case with the canvases of Odilon Redon and Gustave Moreau.

Redon pours his visions into a world of chaotic colors, populated by what appear to be infected or giant flowers: in a microcosm that reveals itself to be a macrocosm. Moreau often bends myth and episodes from the Bible to mirror his anxieties. He enriches his scenes with a substratum of meaning, which speaks more to the viewer's emotions than to his reason.

Elements for a Horror

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

An authentic Horror atmosphere, one could say. The figure in white, standing on the rowing boat entering this little cemetery dock, thus raises many questions about the painting in the mind of the viewer.

The viewer feels lost, lacking a compass with which to fully interpret what they see. And it is at that point that the inner journey begins. Questions prove intriguing to the viewer, who will thus find entirely personal answers to them once they have had time to reflect. This is what happened, for example, in the case of the composer Sergej Rachmaninov. After getting to know Böcklin's series of paintings through a number of black and white photographic reproductions, he decided to compose a symphonic poem inspired by them. He called the composition Isle of the Dead, and tried to recreate in music precisely that atmosphere of disquiet that he had experienced.

Böcklin's creative process

At the moment of composition, Böcklin set himself a precise objective that would form both the choice of subject and evocative setting. Everything starts with his intention to make silence fall around him, as soon as he is mentally immersed in his own vision of what the painting should be about. This silence had to be such that, as Bocklin said, a simple knock on the door would make the viewer wince with fear.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Moving on from this point of departure, the painter created the series with a skillful virtuosity of Symbolist taste, revealing himself to be one of the greatest masters in creating both atmosphere and evocative subjects, both to his viewers and to the art cognoscenti of the last hundred years.

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Isle of the Dead | Floating inside the inner world - Hypercritic

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Between 1880 to 1901, the Swiss Symbolist painter Arnold Böcklin created five versions of his most famous work, which is entitled Isle of the Dead. During World War II, Allied bombing partially destroyed the fourth version, which had been acquired by the industrial magnate Baron Heinrich Thyssen. So he painted a fifth.

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Pablo Ruiz Picasso, a Spanish artist, was one of the most influential artists of the 20th century; he was one of the founders, along with Georges Braque, of the Cubist movement, and constructed paintings, sculptures, and collages. With his style, Picasso represented a long arc of art history, examining it in all its different facets.

These varied and multifaceted characteristics are visible in his different 'periods'. The periods into which Picasso's works are divided are the Blue Period (1901/1904), Pink Period (1904/1906), AfricanPeriod (1907/1906), Analytical Cubism (1909/1912), Synthetic Cubism (1912/1919), Neoclassical (late 1910s early 1920s), Surrealist (1920s).

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Thannhauser Collection, Gift, Justin K. Thannhauser, 1978 © 2018 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

The Woman Ironing is a work by Picasso, housed in the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The woman depicted in this work is a woman at work.

Picasso paid much attention to the working class, often making them the main subject of his work; because in this way, the artist exalted the fatigue, exhaustion, stress, burnout, and sadness that often accompanied these workers. The marked trait that defines the figure underlines precisely this condition. The condition of submission to the rules of an excessively harsh society, which weighs on the shoulders of the worker. The woman appears isolated from the context, so just as she is isolated and alone in life.

Picasso succeeded in rendering the melancholic atmosphere around these subjects through the use of the color blue, which dominated these works.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Picasso created The Woman Ironing in 1904, at the end of the Blue Period, which is the reason why there is a strong presence of the colors grey and white. The lighting points, which highlight the woman's scantily detailed face, succeed in conveying the protagonist's fatigue and sacrifice.

But Picasso painted the same subject, with softer strokes and thicker brushstrokes in 1901, at the beginning of his Blue Period in an early version. In this work, the blue tones are much more prevalent than in the 1904 version.

Blue Period

When I realized Casagemas was dead, I started to paint in blue.
Pablo Picasso

This was the starting of Picasso's Periodo Azul (Blue Period), the suicide of one of his friends, the poet, and painter Carlos Casagemas, in February 1901. With the death of his friend, Picasso sank into a severe depression. The painter began to make mainly monochrome paintings in shades of blue to give vent to his grief. Picasso's The Death of Casagemas, in the Picasso Museum in Paris, which he completed in early 1902, has blue-green as its dominant color and a bright red background. This work is therefore the first of the Blue Period.

Picasso's depression lasted for several years, which greatly affected his career, which had been flourishing until then. Picasso's subjects had become the poor and marginalized of society. The colors Picasso used to represent them were cold and melancholic, tending towards blue. But the public was not enthusiastic about Picasso's stylistic change. The anguished themes he addressed by the artist alienated critics and buyers. No one wanted the Blue Period works in their homes.

Sadness, Inside Out

Sadness, an emotion that we often try to hide, pretending that it does not exist; pretending that everything is fine even when it is obvious that, inside or outside, something is wrong. The 2015 Disney Pixar animated film , directed by Pete Docter and with a screenplay by Meg LeFauve and Josh Cooley, deals with this sensitive issue. The stars of this film are the emotions of Riley; a young 11-year-old girl who has just moved from Minnesota to San Francisco for her father's new job. In Riley's mind, there are the colorful personifications of her emotions that control her actions; Joy (Yellow), Fear (Purple), Disgust (Green), Anger (Red) and Sadness (Blue)

Joy acts as the leader and she and the rest of the emotions try to limit the influence of Sadness so that Riley can have happy days all the time. As the family moves into their new home, Riley is forced to deal with many changes.

Despite Joy's various attempts to contain Sadness, she disobeys and so begins to interfere in Riley's actions and memories.

So in the movie, which should be read as a metaphor for the transition from childhood to adolescence, Joy understands that to grow up and feel good, it is so essential to give proper attention to all emotions and that therefore Riley must also experience sadness. Just as Picasso's audience rejected and did not understand the melancholy depicted in the works of the Blue Period, so too Joy understands the fundamental importance of Sadness only at the end of the film.

This is because Riley and Picasso will only be able to feel well after accepting and going through their pain, their blue sadness.

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Woman Ironing | Inside Out sadness - Hypercritic

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Pablo Ruiz Picasso, a Spanish artist, was one of the most influential artists of the 20th century; he was one of the founders, along with Georges Braque, of the Cubist movement, and constructed paintings, sculptures, and collages. With his style, Picasso represented a long arc of art history, examining it in all its different facets.

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Dimensions

Giovanni Boldrini's Portrait of Elizabeth Drexel Lehr is the first work to greet visitors in the luxurious central hall of The Helm in Newport. This figure's welcoming gaze and elegance enclose the poetics of the Italian artist and his ability to capture the beauty of an ephemeral moment.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain

Across the movements, from Florence to Paris

Giovanni Boldini (1842-1931) was a prolific Italian painter, especially appreciated for his portraits. It's difficult to ascribe him to a specific movement since Boldini was always looking for new stimuli in the artistic field. This desire to keep up to date brought him to Florence, where many artists used to meet at the Caffè Michelangiolo. Thus was born the Italian artistic movement of Macchiaioli (around 1860) with which Boldini established solid and fruitful friendships.

Around 1871, Boldini decided to move to Paris, attracted by the cultural climate of the French capital. In those years, he came into contact with the Impressionists. There, his greatest fortune was to be introduced into the salons of the Belle Époque where the painter came into contact with many of his patrons.

Female portraits and Boldini's technique

Boldini made the female figure the favorite subject of his portraits. The ardent desire to portray women's faces did not abandon him even in his old age when, almost completely blind, he continued to make fine charcoals, drawing and following the features through touching their faces.

In his Portrait of Elisabeth Wharton Drexel, there are stylistic elements recurring in his works. The color is bright and shiny, such as reproducing the special effects of silk and satin of the orange dress. Other characteristic elements are his saber strokes of color through which the painter outlines the elegant dress of the woman. Moreover, with the same rapidity of stroke, the setting is also defined as almost sketched superficially. The painter makes the worldly atmosphere. Here, as in all his portraits, a frenetic vortex of brushstrokes envelops the figure and calls to mind the unprecedented perception of speed then experienced through the new technologies: a new rhythm that invades even the most comfortable living rooms.

A swirling moment in a life of constraint

Amongst the silks and taffeta, Boldini's women have a restlessness inside them, a quiver that reveals the Parisian high society portrayed. The same society that Giuseppe Verdi, also portrayed by Boldini, describes in La traviata (1853).

Portrait of Giuseppe Verdi (1886)
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Like Violetta, Boldini's women appear to have an ephemeral beauty, caged between the laces of a bodice and of society. Such women reveal their own nature far from the crowd. As the protagonist of La traviata does when, at the end of the first Act, after greeting the guests, she abandons herself to her thoughts ( È strano!... è strano!... ) and then concludes with a liberating cabaletta at sunrise.

Povera donna, sola, abbandonata
In questo popoloso deserto
Che appellano Parigi,
Che spero or più?
Che far degg'io?
Gioire!
Di voluttà ne' vortici perir!
Gioir!

A poor, lonely woman
Abandoned in this teeming desert
They call Paris!
What can I hope? What should I do?
Enjoy myself! Plurge into the vortex
Of pleasure and drown there!
Enjoy myself!

The vortexes are the same that Boldini proposes in his brushstrokes. As the solitude and fiction in which Violetta, Elizabeth Drexel Lehr, and other Boldini's figures live.

Their slender and elegant silhouettes, smiling and confident faces, show themselves in an instant of joy and enjoying the present as if to challenge the condition that afflicts them.

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Boldini's Portrait of Elizabeth Drexel Lehr | Swirls of escape - Hypercritic

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Location of the visited exhibition Dimensions Giovanni Boldrini's Portrait of Elizabeth Drexel Lehr is the first work to greet visitors in the luxurious central hall of The Helm in Newport. This figure's welcoming gaze and elegance enclose the poetics of the Italian artist and his ability to capture the beauty of an ephemeral moment.

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In Houses at Murnau or Summer Landscape, Wassily Kandinsky unleashes all the colors his eyes captured during his sojourn in Bavaria. The composition and the spreading of the colors remind the viewer of the painterly materiality of Paul Gaugin and all Post-Impressionists. Even more Mediterranean, the few colors are predominantly primary: yellow, blue, and red, with light touches of green. There are no nuances. The intense tonal differences guide Kandinsky. The chromatic breaks delimit the forms by contrasting them with the blue that Kandinsky uses for the shadows. The presence of the drawing lines is light. And where it does appear, it is marked by a black line and camouflaged by dense color strokes.

Image courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago, Bequest of Katharine Kuh/CC0 Public Domain Designation.

Thanks to its subject and the technique's immediacy, this work by Kandinsky could be juxtaposed with other artworks and different forms.

If Houses at Murnau were a house-shaped mosaic

It could be a composition made of tesserae, articulated in a succession of forms and alternating colors. And thinking of these tesserae in the shape of a house, Summer Landscapes would be the Town Mosaic of Palace. It's an assemblage of painted faience plaques, dating back to 1700-1600 B.C., preserved at the Heraklion Museum, in Crete. Perhaps from the decoration of valuable wooden furniture, the mosaic represents a city through tiles of painted faience. Each house is a distinct tile with diversified shapes and patterns.

Image courtesy of Zde, via Wikimedia/CC BY-SA 4.0

...or a colorful board game

Keeping in mind tesserae, and if this artwork were a board game, it would be Kingdomino. Conceived by Bruno Cathala and designed by Cyril Bouquet, it's a Blue Orange Games' award-winning. The players create landscapes, outlined them through the alternation of a few chosen colors. Tile after tile, the under-construction kingdom expands with cultivated fields, forests, grasslands, and seas. The main goal is getting the best score, and players can also achieve it by creating a colorful composition, like Kandinsky with his Houses at Murnau.

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Houses at Murnau | Simply and colorful inspirations - Hypercritic

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Location of the visited exhibition In Houses at Murnau or Summer Landscape , Wassily Kandinsky unleashes all the colors his eyes captured during his sojourn in Bavaria. The composition and the spreading of the colors remind the viewer of the painterly materiality of Paul Gaugin and all Post-Impressionists.

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Born in 1880, the German artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was one of the founders of Die Brücke (The Bridge), a group of German expressionist artists. At the same time as the French movement dubbed Les Fauves - 'the Beasts' - these German avant-garde artists aimed to act as a bridge, a passage, between the old and the new, thus between German neo-romantic painting and modern expressionist painting. Between 1909 and 1910, Kirchner painted . And as the Die Brücke, this oeuvre represents a passage: from childhood to Puberty. A little girl's body transforming into that of a woman.

Sensuality and innocence

The girl Marzella, who gives the work its name, had also been a model for the artist in other works such as Female Artist. In this artwork, she's naked, sitting on a bed. Her heavy and sensual make-up - dark eyeliner and red lipstick - contrasts with the childhood innocence of her skinny body and the white ribbon. Marzella is like Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. And she looks at the viewer, breaking down the fourth wall like Phoebe Waller-Bridge's character in TV Shows Fleabag.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

Die Brücke in contrasts with the Fauves

The goal of the Die Brücke artists was to denounce the hypocrisy of the society in which they lived. For this, Kirchner wanted to weave social commentary into Marzella.

They used violent and acid colors and disharmonious figures, surrounded by black or strong chromatic contrasts. The movement wanted to engage as many people as possible. Woodcuts were often used, a technique that allowed artists to reach a wider audience.

Die Brücke contrasts itself with the optimism of the French expressionists, Les Fauves. Their works do not address political or social issues. The artists of this movement describe things as they feel them, and not as they see them. Enveloped in the optimism that invaded Paris in the early 1900s, they try to convey positive feelings. In their works, there is no volume and no perspective, but there are sharp lines, and bright, unnatural colors. Pure color, spread with flat brushstrokes.

The reference to Puberty

In this oeuvre, the German artist refers to Edvard Munch's Puberty (1895).

Edvard Munch, Puberty. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain.

Unlike Marzella, the girl in the Norwegian painter's canvas does not show confidence and seems to hide fears for what her future will be. Despite the fact that her gaze is turned towards the viewer, it is as if it is going beyond, absorbed in thoughts and concerns. To make the work of Munch even darker are the colors he used, which reflect the state of mind of the young woman. Munch's colors are more gloomy and reflect the state of mind of the young woman. The girls' gestures recall that of Eve and Adam after committing the original sin in the book of . The scene is taken from Masaccio's famous fresco Expulsion from Paradise.

The Florentine artist shows the two biblical characters while covering their faces and groins, as they have just assumed the awareness of being naked. After eating apples from the Knowledge Tree of good and evil, shame and prudery become characteristics that differentiate humans from animals. In fact, according to Christianity, these emotions did not exist before that, just as they did for young women before puberty.

Masaccio, Expulsion from Paradise. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

Breaking taboos

The passage from childhood to puberty has always been considered as an element of shame.

But in the 21st century, TV shows such as Big Mouth had a different approach to this delicate theme. The teenage protagonists face all difficult phases of adolescence. From the appearance of pubic hair to the first menstrual cycle to the discovery of sexuality. In this show, hormones become monsters, and shame is a mean wizard.

This way, Big Mouth shows puberty with lightness and comedy, taking a step in a different direction if compared to the painting Marzella.

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Marzella | The passage from childhood to puberty - Hypercritic

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Location of the visited exhibition Born in 1880, the German artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was one of the founders of Die Brücke (The Bridge), a group of German expressionist artists.

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A first glance, the figures of The City Rises ( La Città che sale)seem to emerge from a background that looks like television static. With this work, Umberto Boccioni officially took his place in 1911 in the school of . Yet his technique still owes much to Divisionism, a movement to which he had until then belonged, together with Gaetano Previati and Giovanni Segantini. This represented views of the suburbs of cities which were then on the road towards industrialization.

Drawning the viewer

In this first Futurist work, the setting is the same, and the brushwork looks fragmented, made up of little commas, in the same manner as in Divisionism. What has changed radically is the point of view that interprets the landscape. It is no longer just real-life social criticism; the viewer is drawn into and involved in the frantic action represented, in the work of the construction site, the violent force of horses and men, caught by a whirling, ascending force. The only elements which remain motionless are the buildings under construction in the background. Everything that is alive moves precisely because it's full of vitality.

Primary colors

This scenario overwhelms human beings and sweeps them away in a flow of animal energy, which manifets itself through a red mass in the center of the composition. Along with red, the other predominant colors are also primary ones, yellow and blue.

The first owner of this seminal work of art was the composer Dante Michelangelo Benvenuto Ferruccio Busoni, an Italian pianist and composer who made his fortune abroad. By buying the work in 1912 he demonstrated his lively artistic sensitivity, in step with thezeitgeist of the early 20 th century.

Art and music at the beginning of the century

In comparison with then-contemporary music and experimentations therewith, Ferruccio Busoni was incredibly curious and attentive. This was all the more noticeable when one considers that the music scene was then opening up to Arnold Schönberg's innovative dodecaphony and Igor Stravinsky. His Rite of Spring has several similarities with The City Rises: and not only chronologically, as they share the same rhythm of composition and the same disorienting effect for the audience.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/ Public Domain

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The City Rises is Umberto Boccioni's first Futurist work - Hypercritic

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Location of the visited exhibition A first glance, the figures of The City Rises ( La Città che sale)seem to emerge from a background that looks like television static. With this work, Umberto Boccioni officially took his place in 1911 in the school of .

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La Città Futurista | Futurama and Futurism - Hypercritic

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The artist exhibited his panel entitled La Città Nuova, later renamed La Città Futurista, casamento with external lifts, at the exhibition of the Nuove Tendenze group, held in Milan in 1914 at the Famiglia Artistica

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A man, a woman, and a little child. Their bodies are intertwined, showing their close family bond. But something dark pervades Egon Schiele's The Family, something unknown even to the German artist, whose hope of having a family turned into a sorrowful foreboding.

Sharp, fluid and vibrant line

Egon Schiele was a painter of the Viennese Secession and then became part of the Expressionist movement. He was a great friend and pupil of Gustav Klimt, who introduced him to many patrons when Schiele decided to leave the Academy of Fine Arts of Vienna, considered conservative, opting for independent education.

In his works, the line that defines the figures is sharp, fluid, and vibrant. The colors communicate feelings free from bourgeois respectability. Passion, sensuality, discomfort, neurosis, fear, and anxiety, Schiele represented these emotions, preferring subjects such as portraits, nudes, and self-portraits.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain

A mournful foreboding

The painting entitled The Family was composed in 1918 when Schiele and his wife and model Edit Harms both died. During the composition phase, Schiele gave it the title Crouching Couple, as at first, the work was to represent the painter and his wife. Only later did Schiele decide to insert the figure of the unborn child at the bottom.

The canvas represents the painter's dream and desired reality but materialized only on this work. Edit contracted Spanish fever during 1918 and died six months pregnant on October 28th. Three days later, Egon Schiele died of the same disease.

In the canvas, the dark tones of the setting are an omen of death and unhappiness: these were the years of the First World War and of the Spanish flu, the epidemic which caused the deaths of twenty million people across Europe.

The family that is about to be formed is not serene, as can be deduced from the adults' gazes.

The members are naked, innocent, unarmed. The pale, bare skin is almost dazzling in the midst of existential darkness. Schiele represents himself at the apex of this pyramidal composition, with his legs and chest open in an attempt to protect his wife and son. Moreover, he is the only character who looks at us, breaking the fourth wall and imposing on the viewer a dialogue, if not a request for help.

Storytelling of Mourning

The miniseries WandaVision, created in 2021 by Jac Schaeffer for Disney+, tells the stages of mourning within a narrative that plays with viewers through metanarrative and breaking the fourth wall.

Wanda Maximoff, the series' protagonist, refuses to face the death of her beloved Vision. She seems to be the only one who still holds his memories, alive in her mind and the reality she has artfully recreated through her superpowers. So in her universe, in what she tells herself and the rest of the world, Vision has never died. She even creates a family with him, setting the world of classic and cult American TV series, from black and white to color, with accurate quotes and homages to the serial genre.

Both Wanda and Schiele make the same gesture: they take advantage of their power to create reality to crown their dreams, to save memories and affections, aware that the concrete everyday reality is different.

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The Family | When Schiele's desire became a dark foreboding - Hypercritic

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A man, a woman, and a little child. Their bodies are intertwined, showing their close family bond. But something dark pervades Egon Schiele's The Family, something unknown even to the German artist, whose hope of having a family turned into a sorrowful foreboding.

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This year marks the beginning of Contemporary Art

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From 1925, Metropolis' painter Otto Dix became an essential exponent of the New Objectivity. This artistic movement played a social criticism role in Germany by looking at everyday life with a cynical, outspoken, and cruel eye.
Such as George Grosz, John Heartfield,and Otto Dix himself, many artists who witnessed and survived the WWI horrors recorded through their works how Germany was paying severe post-war consequences. For this reason, war-wounded people and rejected by society are recurring figures in Otto Dix's oeuvres.

They are also present in Otto Dix's Metropolis triptych, at the edge of the frame, with their green military uniform. The three ex-soldiers, two of whom are without legs, appear distressed and beg for attention in vain. Indeed, some passing people, proudly flaunting naked legs, are pushing them more and more at the corners, in the dark. The opulent passers-by parade into a careless coming and going. They hurry to reach the central panel party: a ballroom animated by musicians, where everything is full of light and bright colors.

Life at the edges of society

A visual rendition of the Weimar Republic's contrasts can be found in the TV series Babylon Berlin, a contemporary German neo-noir. In Fact, the show shares the same dark and luxurious atmospheres. It also exposes the contrast between poverty and social difficulties with the metropolitan nightlife's excesses and energy.

Otto Dix forced the whole perspective to show the horror of reality. He stretched and deformed faces and folded the houses on themselves.
Contemporary to this triptych is , Fritz Lang 's oppressive and disturbing vision of the future, displaying the same social and existential crisis.

Because of the harsh criticism of war and politics, the Third Reich enlisted Otto Dix among the Degenerate Artists. They included people who didn't reflect the sublime and canonical Aryan race's values. The Reich considered them dangerous and worth of destruction. Luckily, history went differently from The Man in The High Castle by Philip Dick, and Otto Dix's Metropolis has survived.

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Otto Dix's Metropolis displays social and existential crisis - Hypercritic

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Location of the visited exhibition From 1925, Metropolis ' painter Otto Dix became an essential exponent of the New Objectivity. This artistic movement played a social criticism role in Germany by looking at everyday life with a cynical, outspoken, and cruel eye.

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Surrealism wouldn't exist without Sigmund Freud. Thanks to his founder André Breton and his fascination with Freud's studies, Surrealism began in 1920. The existence of a subconscious, an intimate world within its own, full of symbolic fantasies, captured all the Surrealists, and the investigation of this inner world is a cornerstone of their art.

Salvador Dalì is the Surrealist par excellence: " The only difference between the Surrealists and me is that I am a Surrealist," he used to say. From the 1930s onwards, Dalì developed a unique technique to create works through the subconscious's stimulation: the so-called paranoiac-critical method.

The paranoiac-critical process

An example of this technique is the Portrait of Madame Isabel Styler-Tas. Dalì, next to the realistic portrait of the woman which stands out on a desolate wasteland, proposes a second one on the left.
This first oeuvre is a realistic composition of landscape elements that play with the human eye and reveal an emotional background of the portrayed Madame. For this reason, the other title of the painting is Melancholy. The second portrait consists of a spur of rock, crossed by an arid uphill road that culminates in a dark cave that appears behind cypress trees clinging to the ground.

The technique might appear similar to Giuseppe Arcimboldo 's portrait production, but what changes here is the method that originates it. In fact, in theparanoiac-critical process, the artist focuses on the paranoid pathology that induces to fall chronically into conscious delirium states, even using reason to justify beliefs and interpretations that spring from an inner reality.

Dalì's take on the portrait

In The Portrait of Madame Isabel Styler-Tas, Dalì starts from a distinction between hallucinations and paranoid delirium. The hallucinating phenomenon of pareidolia, for instance, is an optical illusion that reflects inner and unconscious interpretation patterns of a random reality.

Even Leonardo da Vinci recommended a careful observation of wall-stains or marble veins before creating landscapes, faces, and objects, using the materials' natural structure to express the inner interpretation. But hallucinations are always personal, triggered by a rational reading of an accident. The paranoid delirium, Dalì's favorite creative process, starts from a clear and evident reality but then elaborates subtle visions and connections that instill doubts even in healthy observers.

Starting from these ideas, Dalì generates the paranoiac-critical process. The painter immerges himself in the paranoid phase, a delirium state during the creative act, to create rationalized images, forms, and associations in the subsequent critical phase. Some remarkable Dalì's works created with the paranoiac-critical method are The Persistence of Memory and Metamorphosis of Narcissus.
Oops, the image's gone.
Waiting for its return, we can see this photo of Dalì with his big cat.

Image courtesy of Roger Higgins, World Telegram staff photographer / Public domain.

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The Portrait of Madame Isabel Styler-Tas shows Dalì's method - Hypercritic

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Surrealism wouldn't exist without Sigmund Freud. Thanks to his founder André Breton and his fascination with Freud's studies, Surrealism began in 1920. The existence of a subconscious, an intimate world within its own, full of symbolic fantasies, captured all the Surrealists, and the investigation of this inner world is a cornerstone of their art.