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Where are they going to ?  

 

The project for a ‘History of Fortune’ was commissioned in 1505 to the already famous Pinturicchio, and busy at the time into more than one works for the Cathedral in Siena : the Umbrian artist soonest supplied them with the drawing on cardboard for the floor mosaic to be placed just after entering the church. In 1859, also after remakings and restorations, the woman representing the final ‘Quiet’, and goal of the route here painted, was given name ‘Wisdom’ so that the title of the work changed into ‘Allegory of the mount of Wisdom’.

 

 

A Fortune as lighthearted as she, is troubling enough – the pregnant belly, the gnarled and virile legs - however Fortune made them landing : but they don’t stop now.

Being about to leave are a few well-known men of that time and at their back, almost hidden, a young man and a woman too. Nothing is didactic in the drawing scratched in the marble more than five hundred of years ago, nor is pedagogical : rather there’s something dreamlike – and therefore experiential – about that casual landing, and about the affection that accompanied it, indispensable then to catch their following decision.

However their affection isn’t clearing the fog of anguish, and – ingenuously indeed – it is not said at all, because their steps are already directed on a new path which even is punctuated by envy lazyness and deceit, evidently present when they were accompanied by Fortune too.

Absent indeed is the judgement of each one who imputes the offer which, according to logic, cannot be after the undertaking, so that a goal can be qualified.

Well indeed says that separate space on the marble, between the wayfarers and a desired ‘Quietness’ - or ‘Wisdom’ as the clients then did request - about the emptiness of thought when any illusion can fill that, and which the artist here was honestly be able to describe.

 

Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio - January 28, 2023

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