Everything is filled with Light: the sky, the earth and even hell

"Everything is filled with Light: the sky, the earth and even hell".

At the end of 2019, when I was painting Inferno, a mixed media composition which includes one of my miniatures representing Dante and Virgil in the ninth circle, I could not imagine that the pandemic would sweep the world. When I contemplate it today, I am amazed at this metaphysical vision of Hell and I wonder if our Chaplain to the Artists of the Côte d'Azur, Father Yves Marie Lequin, did not have a visionary glimmer when he proposed the theme of the Artists' Mass 2020: "Hell, Purgatory, Paradise", inspired by Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, and in particular by the last verses of Dante's Inferno which read

"E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle".

This triptych dedicated to the Divine Comedy intended to celebrate the Year of Dante, or the seventh centenary of the death of the Supreme Poet, is linked to the last words that appear at the end of each of the three canticles of the monumental medieval poetic work.

Inferno, Canto XXXIV, verse 139: E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle .

Purgatory, Canto XXXIII, verse 141: Pure and willing to ascend the stars .

Paradise, Canto XXXIII, verse 145: The love that moves the sun and the other stars .

As pointed out to me by the art critic and poet, but above all a dear friend, Enzo Santese, the symbolic value of the word "stars" is associated with light and the energy of being: that is, "the stars, placed at a considerable distance from human misery, are bodies from which light radiates into the universe".

Attilio Momigliano, an authoritative literary critic of the last century and a great scholar of Dante's work, also observes that the mention of the stars, Dante's goal in the final verse of each canto, is not a purely symmetrical response, but an expression of the ideal motif that runs through the poem and constantly lifts the poet towards his goal. It is worth remembering that, at the end of the Middle Ages, the Divine Comedy offers us a great fresco of all previous knowledge, with some glimpses of the Renaissance. It is precisely this journey that the Poet makes, in the company of Virgil to whom Beatrice has entrusted him: a journey into the Other World, the unknown world in which the main characters are Souls. And it is in this way that the stars have become the true leitmotif of my work.

As for the technique, I played on two levels for Hell and Purgatory: that of Tradition, with two miniatures on parchment, combined with that of Abstraction, with a mixed technique of acrylic, acids and waxes, sand and salt. For Paradise, which occupies the central panel, the style is markedly metaphysical with the prevalent use of Klein Blue and gold leaf, thus going beyond mere representation. The gold leaf, which enhances the three panels, represents the spiritual link between the two worlds of Tradition and Contemporaneity.

HELL is represented by a cone sinking downwards, on which are marked references to Dante's nine circles. Black prevails in its various shades, bright, opaque, warm on a red background and cold with a blue background. This creates a dark atmosphere, of fire at the top of the nine spheres, and ice at the bottom of them, in which the Poet finds himself forced and exhausted. It is worth remembering that, after a long and arduous journey through punishment in a dark and narrow space, Dante, in the company of Virgil, finds himself in the ninth circle that contains the traitors imprisoned in ice. In contrast, fragments of gold leaf revive Light in the darkest darkness crossed by the golden spiral that symbolises Dante and Virgil's path. From there he will try to ascend towards "the stars" which will be his guide on the path towards the Divine.

For the structure of the painting, I chose to adopt this inverted conical form inspired by "La Voragine dell'Inferno", a parchment by Sandro Botticelli: at the bottom I inserted a miniature by my hand according to an ancient illuminated manuscript, the Antiphonaire di Padoue (1845) kept at the British Library in London, which perfectly illustrates the ice prison described by Dante.

PURGATORY is vice versa represented by a cone facing upwards and crossed by inclined planes that symbolise the seven terraces of Dante's Purgatory. Here the colour green dominates, symbolising the promise of salvation. Shape and colour indicate the direction to be followed by the Poet: he must always tend to rise towards areas of greater Light, guided by the stars on a path of life where darkness gradually fades.

With regard to the structure of the painting, several stripes of red in the lower part of the painting mark the separation from Hell, recalling its tormenting fire, while at the top of the cone there is a miniature by my hand depicting the moment when some souls are lifted by angels towards Paradise, suggested by the gold stripe. The original comes from the "Bréviaire à l'usage de Besançon" (before 1498).

PARADISE, intentionally at the centre of the triptych as a metaphor for the "Aurea Mediocritas", enhances the abstract choice in which blue prevails: more precisely, a blue that is close to contemporary "Bleu Klein" and which has identified the sky since Giotto's time. The immanent Divinity is expressed through the expansion of gold, a distant reminiscence of the icon, which prevails in the upper semicircle and flows out of the centre of the painting, while the darkness of the lower semicircle is only softened by a shade of black with green hues that recalls the hope that precedes the vision of Paradise.

Note the circularity of the truncated form on its sides, with a thin line of red at the bottom outlining the Earth, and another at the top in dark blue emphasising Heaven. The very dark blue centre of the panel lightens outwards in shades of blue like the "mandorle"  of Christ in traditional icons. The dynamism of the central core symbolises the eternal return of human experience, made up of divinity and humanity, temporality and eternity; and finally, the shower of stars in the barely suggested form of an inverted cone connects the blue with the gold of the background and further accentuates and fuels the central movement.

To conclude, I would like to say a few words about the choice of colours.

For my triptych, intuitively, I chose the black and yellow gold combination for the Inferno, green and moon gold for the Purgatorio and intense blue-gold for the Paradiso, with hints of red in all three panels.

When I had already begun painting them, I found a revealing text in a publication of the Johns Hopkins University Press entitled 'Dante's sense of colours'. It reproduces a research on the different colours evoked in the Divine Comedy, highlighting how they not only possess an aesthetic value, but also suggest an underlying thought.

In his poetic descriptions, Dante does not use many different colours but suggests instead  several shades of a few colours, making them very evocative. The Poet was also a sensitive artist who loved bright colours: in this sense ahead of his time.

More precisely, for his approach to the Inferno, Dante envisages "brown", and then later "black, dark, brown". The air around is "dark, gloomy, black", the vegetation is "gloomy" and the waters are "brown" and even the angels are "black". But in this darkness there are also bright colours that the same darkness cannot cancel: red and vermilion. In his descriptions of Purgatory, the poet uses green, white, yellow, vermilion and gold. The dark background, reminiscent of the Inferno, is traversed by movements in various shades of green with hints of yellow oriented upwards in a dynamic of Light that recall the "emerald green" of Beatrice's eyes and the green colour of her cloak. For Paradise, Dante uses a reference exclusively to white and gold, insisting on the brilliance of these colours that recall precious stones and pervasive Light.

In my painting of Paradise, I favoured blue, which recalls the Divine Feminine and, in the Divine Comedy, the figure of Beatrice. The colour blue is also a common thread, a subtle, almost allusive link in this triptych. It is found almost imperceptibly in the Inferno panel, in the miniature with an icy blue where the traitors freeze, and in Virgil's cloak. At the top of the cone, an allusive trace of blue connects Hell to the central panel of Paradise, which is flooded with blue: a blue that is also found in Purgatory with a faint thread that runs through the miniature, whose sky is blue, and connects the stars to each other, to border on the edge of the panel itself.

This triptych of the Divine Comedy also expresses an ideal summary of my artistic journey. After an initial, more figurative period in the 1990s, the icon crossed my path at the beginning of the 21st century, followed by the miniature: both remain very present in my current style, resulting from a fusion of traditional art, with precious materials and historical pigments combined with experimental and rigorous techniques, on the one hand, and with mixed technique art with poor materials, acrylic colours and a freer, more instinctive gesture, on the other. But the common denominator always remains the result of a long period of research and reflection. Thus, in my art, I always prefer to adopt an indirect approach similar to that of a writer to his reader.

I hope that this artistic contribution of mine to the year that celebrates Dante Alighieri will be understood and appreciated as a humble commitment to the success of this initiative, which has been launched all over the world on a broad spectrum and includes the figurative arts: with determination and enthusiasm worthy of the divine Poet who is commonly considered the father of the Italian language.