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Lot Essay
'A strong current of mysticism is indispensible to the formation of classical artists. Greek painters and the great Italian artists derived it from religion. Let us not forget that mysteries flourished at the time of Polignatius and would not have been foreign to his severe and emotional drawing, to that ethos which enveloped his figures, to that idealism so eulogized by Aristotle. Today let us hope to be sufficiently mystical for the rebirth of classicism.' (Giorgio de Chirico ' Classicismo pittorico', La Ronda, July, 1921 quoted in On Classic Ground, Picasso, Lger, de Chirico and the New Classicism, 1910-1930 exh. cat, London, 1990, p. 78.)
Painted in 1920, Mercurio e i metafisici (Mercury and the Metaphysicians) is one of the first and most significant works of Giorgio De Chirico's classical phase of painting that he began after a period of copying from Old Master paintings by Raphael, Lotto, Carpaccio and Michelangelo in Rome in 1919. On its first exhibition in Milan in January 1921, this painting was immediately acquired from the show by the well-known composer Alfredo Casella, himself a great champion of neo-classical ideals. Editor of the magazine Ars Nova and a theoretician of neo-classical music, whose tireless promotion of the work of Antonio Vivaldi was largely responsible for the 20th Century rediscovery of Venetian composer and his work, Casella was also an important patron and collector of avant-garde Italian art throughout the 1920s and '30s.
Following the end of the First World War and the death of his great friend and champion Guillaume Apollinaire, de Chirico had decided not to return to Paris but to move from his military stationing in Ferrara to Rome. In Rome in 1919, the manner and style of his painting immediately underwent the most radical change of his career. It was in front of Titian's painting of Sacred and Profane Love that de Chirico was granted what he later described as 'the revelation of great painting' that made him realize that the true mystery and fascination of pictorial art lay not within a painting's subject matter but within the way in which the image was painted. 'There is a static, immobile and intense quality' he wrote, of the way in which Raphael paints a figure clothed in drapery for example, 'which makes us think about the eternity of matter.
The image seems to have existed even before the painter created it.' (Giorgio de Chirico, 'Il Convegno' no. 6, 1920, quoted in On Classic Ground... op.cit, p. 76) It was this sense of eternal values combined with the innate mystery and poetry he had uncovered with his Pittura Metafisica that de Chirico now sought to attain in his art.
A subtle fusion of metaphysical mood, strange allegory and the rich, new classical style of painting that de Chirico adopted in Rome, Mercurio e i Metafisici is one of the most famous and important works from this dramatic period of change in de Chirico's art. Depicting a mysterious classical allegory taking place - not unusually for de Chirico - in an Italian piazza, it is a work that was in fact known for many years under the more generic title of Piazza d'Italia. Always regarded as one of de Chirico's finest, if also most mysterious, classical paintings, this much exhibited work is now known to be one of two highly important and very different paintings bearing the title Mercurio e i Metafisici that de Chirico made at this time and which he himself considered to have especially significance within his oeuvre. In the preface to a 1921 catalogue he described these two paintings of Mercury among the Metaphysicians as being 'difficult works which few will understand, and thus of great future significance.' (Giorgio de Chirico quoted in On Classic Ground, Picasso, Léger, de Chirico and the New Classicism, 1910-1930 exh. cat, London, 1990, p. 76)
The second of these two paintings is subtitled La statua che si é mossa (The statue that moved itself) and depicts a naked male figure holding a spear in front of a reclining statue of a classical female, with the figure of Mercury/Hermes holding his caduceus in the background. The present work stands in marked contrast to this second painting on the subject. Taking the form of an Italian piazza, it echoes strongly the format of several of de Chirico's earlier metaphysical landscapes. Only here, in addition to de Chirico's new sensual Old Master style of painting, the entire scene has been bathed in a warm southern light. While the buildings on the right of the painting are reminiscent in some respects of the Romanesque arches of Turin and Ferrara, the buildings to the left and the rocky landscape itself are more evocative of the warmer southern landscape of Italy where de Chirico was now living. With this deliberate shift in climate, the mood of the picture as a whole is also completely changed from that of the dark melancholic landscapes of his earlier Metaphysical paintings with their long awkward shadows and strange perspectives so evocative of the disjuncture of modernity.
Indeed, De Chirico has taken great pains in this painting to render its perspective in a united, cohesive and strongly classical way. The single vanishing point of the entire composition is centred rather pointedly on the wooden door at the foot of the central tower while the picture's main figures (the horse with companion and the naked man with a spear) together form a classical triangular framework with the central tower in a manner not dissimilar to the clever use of such classicizing geometry in a painting like Andrea Mantegna's Parnassus. Here, as in Mantegna's painting, the geometry of the composition is employed to create an overall atmosphere of harmony. It is only the subtly strange positioning of the figures and the central statue in the painting that generates the scene's pervasive sense of enigma. The peculiar mixture of both clothed and naked figures also lends to the mysterious atmosphere of the painting but the overall effect is one of warm nostalgia for history and myth rather than of contemporary disquiet. De Chirico's careful rendering of an architecture that is clearly inhabited as well as sporting jewel-like classical statues also encourages this brighter sense of enigmatic and historic space in a way that is wholly absent from the ominous statues and disjunctive architecture of his darker and more disturbing Paris and Ferrara metaphysical paintings.
Maurizio Fagiolo dell' Arco has suggested that it is the figure on the right of the composition with his spear that represents Mercury in this picture and that the Metaphysicians of the title are the philosophical-looking couple walking in discussion at the centre of the work. The fact that a similar naked figure holding a spear and cloak stands at the centre of the second painting Mercurio e i metafisici (La statua che si é mossa) while a clearly identifiable figure of Mercury complete with winged helmet and caduceus is clearly visible behind him suggests otherwise. As with so many of de Chirico's paintings the mystery this painting generates is intended to be an unanswerable one. Marking a fusion of metaphysical enigma with a classical vista, Mercurio e i metafisici is a work that maintains the deep sense of enigma common to all of de Chirico's finest works, while also appearing to chart the beginnings of a new and brighter odyssey. A timeless and distinctly Mediterranean landscape it is a work that proposes a new post-modernist realm, through which the artist's inherently nostalgic and often melancholic mind could wander freely and eternally.
Painted in 1920, Mercurio e i metafisici (Mercury and the Metaphysicians) is one of the first and most significant works of Giorgio De Chirico's classical phase of painting that he began after a period of copying from Old Master paintings by Raphael, Lotto, Carpaccio and Michelangelo in Rome in 1919. On its first exhibition in Milan in January 1921, this painting was immediately acquired from the show by the well-known composer Alfredo Casella, himself a great champion of neo-classical ideals. Editor of the magazine Ars Nova and a theoretician of neo-classical music, whose tireless promotion of the work of Antonio Vivaldi was largely responsible for the 20th Century rediscovery of Venetian composer and his work, Casella was also an important patron and collector of avant-garde Italian art throughout the 1920s and '30s.
Following the end of the First World War and the death of his great friend and champion Guillaume Apollinaire, de Chirico had decided not to return to Paris but to move from his military stationing in Ferrara to Rome. In Rome in 1919, the manner and style of his painting immediately underwent the most radical change of his career. It was in front of Titian's painting of Sacred and Profane Love that de Chirico was granted what he later described as 'the revelation of great painting' that made him realize that the true mystery and fascination of pictorial art lay not within a painting's subject matter but within the way in which the image was painted. 'There is a static, immobile and intense quality' he wrote, of the way in which Raphael paints a figure clothed in drapery for example, 'which makes us think about the eternity of matter.
The image seems to have existed even before the painter created it.' (Giorgio de Chirico, 'Il Convegno' no. 6, 1920, quoted in On Classic Ground... op.cit, p. 76) It was this sense of eternal values combined with the innate mystery and poetry he had uncovered with his Pittura Metafisica that de Chirico now sought to attain in his art.
A subtle fusion of metaphysical mood, strange allegory and the rich, new classical style of painting that de Chirico adopted in Rome, Mercurio e i Metafisici is one of the most famous and important works from this dramatic period of change in de Chirico's art. Depicting a mysterious classical allegory taking place - not unusually for de Chirico - in an Italian piazza, it is a work that was in fact known for many years under the more generic title of Piazza d'Italia. Always regarded as one of de Chirico's finest, if also most mysterious, classical paintings, this much exhibited work is now known to be one of two highly important and very different paintings bearing the title Mercurio e i Metafisici that de Chirico made at this time and which he himself considered to have especially significance within his oeuvre. In the preface to a 1921 catalogue he described these two paintings of Mercury among the Metaphysicians as being 'difficult works which few will understand, and thus of great future significance.' (Giorgio de Chirico quoted in On Classic Ground, Picasso, Léger, de Chirico and the New Classicism, 1910-1930 exh. cat, London, 1990, p. 76)
The second of these two paintings is subtitled La statua che si é mossa (The statue that moved itself) and depicts a naked male figure holding a spear in front of a reclining statue of a classical female, with the figure of Mercury/Hermes holding his caduceus in the background. The present work stands in marked contrast to this second painting on the subject. Taking the form of an Italian piazza, it echoes strongly the format of several of de Chirico's earlier metaphysical landscapes. Only here, in addition to de Chirico's new sensual Old Master style of painting, the entire scene has been bathed in a warm southern light. While the buildings on the right of the painting are reminiscent in some respects of the Romanesque arches of Turin and Ferrara, the buildings to the left and the rocky landscape itself are more evocative of the warmer southern landscape of Italy where de Chirico was now living. With this deliberate shift in climate, the mood of the picture as a whole is also completely changed from that of the dark melancholic landscapes of his earlier Metaphysical paintings with their long awkward shadows and strange perspectives so evocative of the disjuncture of modernity.
Indeed, De Chirico has taken great pains in this painting to render its perspective in a united, cohesive and strongly classical way. The single vanishing point of the entire composition is centred rather pointedly on the wooden door at the foot of the central tower while the picture's main figures (the horse with companion and the naked man with a spear) together form a classical triangular framework with the central tower in a manner not dissimilar to the clever use of such classicizing geometry in a painting like Andrea Mantegna's Parnassus. Here, as in Mantegna's painting, the geometry of the composition is employed to create an overall atmosphere of harmony. It is only the subtly strange positioning of the figures and the central statue in the painting that generates the scene's pervasive sense of enigma. The peculiar mixture of both clothed and naked figures also lends to the mysterious atmosphere of the painting but the overall effect is one of warm nostalgia for history and myth rather than of contemporary disquiet. De Chirico's careful rendering of an architecture that is clearly inhabited as well as sporting jewel-like classical statues also encourages this brighter sense of enigmatic and historic space in a way that is wholly absent from the ominous statues and disjunctive architecture of his darker and more disturbing Paris and Ferrara metaphysical paintings.
Maurizio Fagiolo dell' Arco has suggested that it is the figure on the right of the composition with his spear that represents Mercury in this picture and that the Metaphysicians of the title are the philosophical-looking couple walking in discussion at the centre of the work. The fact that a similar naked figure holding a spear and cloak stands at the centre of the second painting Mercurio e i metafisici (La statua che si é mossa) while a clearly identifiable figure of Mercury complete with winged helmet and caduceus is clearly visible behind him suggests otherwise. As with so many of de Chirico's paintings the mystery this painting generates is intended to be an unanswerable one. Marking a fusion of metaphysical enigma with a classical vista, Mercurio e i metafisici is a work that maintains the deep sense of enigma common to all of de Chirico's finest works, while also appearing to chart the beginnings of a new and brighter odyssey. A timeless and distinctly Mediterranean landscape it is a work that proposes a new post-modernist realm, through which the artist's inherently nostalgic and often melancholic mind could wander freely and eternally.