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Dimensions: 60 by 80cm.
23 5/8 by 31 1/2 in.
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Provenance: PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE ITALIAN COLLECTOR
Galleria d'Arte Sianesi, Milan
Galleria Permanente d'Arte, Bergamo
Galleria Santacroce, Florence
Acquired from the above by the previous owner
Thence by descent to the present owner
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Exhibited: Florence, Galleria Santacroce, Maestri contemporanei, 1963, illustrated in the catalogue
Florence, Galleria Santacroce, Maestri contemporanei, 1965, illustrated in the catalogue
Florence, Galleria Pananti, Il sogno interrotto del linguaggio metafisico, 1993
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Notes: Representing one of the most iconic images of De Chirico's art, Piazza d'Italia depicts an enigmatic, desolate urban setting, its eerie quality characteristic of his metaphysical paintings. Born in Volos, Greece from Italian parents, Giorgio de Chirico was surrounded by images of the antique world since early childhood. Classical mythology, history and architecture provided an endless source of inspiration for the artist, who often combined these subjects with a contemporary setting. In the present work, he combined the statue from classical antiquity, and what resembles Renaissance architecture, with a contemporary city scene, creating an image of a mystical and nostalgic quality. Piazza d'Italia belongs to a series of De Chirico's paintings of Italian city squares, most of which are conspicuously devoid of human presence. In the present work, two male figures are seen towards the background, but with their bodies oddly scaled-down in comparison to the architecture and to the large statue, the painting retains the majestically quiet, enigmatic mood and timeless quality.
The centre of the square is occupied by the statue of a sleeping, draped woman on a large pedestal, its long, dramatic shadow dominating the human figures. This image was inspired by the antique sculpture of Ariadne (fig. 1), most probably one of the Roman copies of the lost Hellenistic statue, that the artist would have seen in Florence or in the Vatican. Asleep on the island of Naxos, where she had been abandoned by Theseus, Ariadne instils the entire composition with a dream-like atmosphere. Quoting the artist's own writing, James Thrall Soby explained how this general premise of melancholy, central to De Chirico's metaphysical paintings, was derived from the writing of Friedrich Nietzsche: "As to the derivation of the Italian squares or 'memories of Italy,' the artist gives due credit to Nietzsche by describing in his autobiography what seems to him to have been the German philosopher's most remarkable innovation: 'This innovation is a strange and profound poetry, infinitely mysterious and solitary, based on Stimmung (which might be translated... as atmosphere), based, I say, on the Stimmung of an autumn afternoon when the weather is clear and the shadows are longer than in summer, for the sun is beginning to be lower.' [...] There is no reason to doubt that Nietzsche's prose played a key part in stimulating the painter's interest in creating a poetic reconstruction of the dream-lit piazzas of Italy" (J. T. Soby, Giorgio de Chirico, New York, 1955, pp. 27-28).
Fig. 1, Ariadne, Roman sculpture, stone, Musei Vaticani, Vatican State
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