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Lot Essay
The present painting La notte di Pericle (The Night of Pericles) is a work that stands at the crossroads of de Chirico's art. Sharing many of the elements of the artist's earliest 'Metaphysical' period, the images in the present work are transformed into a lighter mood that anticipates the classicism of the artist's later work of the 1920s and 1930s.
With its floorboarded interior and partially rendered classical backcloth conveying the atmosphere of a theatrical stage-set, the mood of the painting is not disquietingly sinister in the manner of de Chirico's earliest work, but instead more comically strange in its unrealness and overt artificiality. What is presented appears to be a random conglomeration of architectural stage props, organised with the same strange logic of earlier constructions such as The Great Metaphysician of 1917 (fig. 1) into a sombre parody of classical order and geometry.
The enigmatic title of the painting refers to the great Athenean statesman who initiated the building of the Parthenon and many others of the classical city's finest monuments. It also reinforces the parodying of classical grandeur. In addition, the biscuits that often adorned many of de Chirico's most mysterious metaphysical constructions here adorn the false perspectives of this assemblage of oddly shaped blocks in the manner of classical reliefs. At the top of this haphazard construction beneath the pinnacle of a classical facade is a half-painted canvas depicting a statuesque figure that could well be Pericles himself contemplating a broken column and the weird logic of the scene around him. In true de Chirico fashion, everything about this picture is not quite what it seems but rather a carefully wrought enigma that is deliberately confusing to any classical sense of order or rational thought. Given the title of the painting however, de Chirico makes it clear that the strange world of the painting is open to interpretation within the dark nightmare realm of the unconscious imagination.
With its floorboarded interior and partially rendered classical backcloth conveying the atmosphere of a theatrical stage-set, the mood of the painting is not disquietingly sinister in the manner of de Chirico's earliest work, but instead more comically strange in its unrealness and overt artificiality. What is presented appears to be a random conglomeration of architectural stage props, organised with the same strange logic of earlier constructions such as The Great Metaphysician of 1917 (fig. 1) into a sombre parody of classical order and geometry.
The enigmatic title of the painting refers to the great Athenean statesman who initiated the building of the Parthenon and many others of the classical city's finest monuments. It also reinforces the parodying of classical grandeur. In addition, the biscuits that often adorned many of de Chirico's most mysterious metaphysical constructions here adorn the false perspectives of this assemblage of oddly shaped blocks in the manner of classical reliefs. At the top of this haphazard construction beneath the pinnacle of a classical facade is a half-painted canvas depicting a statuesque figure that could well be Pericles himself contemplating a broken column and the weird logic of the scene around him. In true de Chirico fashion, everything about this picture is not quite what it seems but rather a carefully wrought enigma that is deliberately confusing to any classical sense of order or rational thought. Given the title of the painting however, de Chirico makes it clear that the strange world of the painting is open to interpretation within the dark nightmare realm of the unconscious imagination.