Milano, 13 May. (askanews) – A Roman sarcophagus decorated with the Death of Meleager and other episodes of the myth used as a narrative element to tell the story of a gesture, represented here. The exhibition entitled precisely starts from this suggestive construction “History of a gesture” at the Luigi Rovati Foundation in Milan, curated by Salvatore Settis.
“We told it by focusing on the formality of the gesture – the professor told askanews – on the fact that a gesture can be a hieroglyph, it can represent something with a certain constancy. Now the gesture that is the protagonist of this exhibition, a figure who rushes to the scene of some tragic event, the death of someone, violently throwing his arms backwards as he runs, this gesture is a highly conventional gesture that indicates desperation, extreme pain. This gesture was formed in classical antiquity, it enters the repertoire for about two centuries, then it disappears completely for a thousand years and finally returns when an artist, Nicola Pisano and another, Giotto, see a sarcophagus, which is precisely the one on display here, and recognize this gesture and relaunch it on the world stage”.
The exhibition also has a section dedicated to the thought of Aby Warburg, who identified in this gesture an emblematic case of transmission of ancient expressive forms, summarized in the concept of Pathosformel. And, starting from the sarcophagus, the gesture, after a long oblivion, returns to cross the centuries again.
“Nicola Pisano – added Settis – uses it for a mother of the massacre of the innocents, she is a mother who mourns the death of her son. Giotto uses it for Saint John next to the dead Christ and so on. And Picasso instead uses it for the bombing of Guernica, that is, for pain, a war, for a collective death”.
The exhibition at the Rovati Foundation presents itself as an investigation that combines archaeology, art history and image theory, to offer the public an unprecedented perspective on the continuity and transformation of figurative languages from antiquity to the contemporary.
The exhibition is ongoing until August 2nd History of a gesture. The myth of Meleager from classical art to Warburg and Picassoedited by Salvatore Settis.
Luigi Rovati ETS Foundation
Corso Venezia 52, Milan
T. 02.38.27.30.01
www.fondazioneluigirovati.org
[email protected]
Hours
Open from Wednesday to Sunday, 10.00am-7.00pm (last entry 6.00pm)
iO Donna © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
