IdDante (Vanitas Loquelæ)
Year: 2016
Title: Vanitas Loquelæ
Photo: Davide Farabegoli
A piece inspired by the life of Dante Alighieri and featured in the collective exhibition idDante hosted in 2016 in Ravenna (Italy), the city in which the poet spent his last years.
A show entirely dedicated to the portrait of one of the fathers of modern Italian language, inspired by the exact facial reconstruction based on the poet’s skull made by the Bologna University.
This work focuses intentionally on the skull, rather than a romantic interpretation of Dante’s face as seen in many paintings throughout centuries. The topic of death and the path from its lowest to the highest spiritual edge have been crucial to the completion of the piece, that pays homage to classic vanitas paintings as well as to the philosophical concepts related to the caducity of life and earthly glory.