Work: Pediment

Description

“Clay, which at a glance looks so docile to the caresses of our fingers, requires a deep understanding of thickness, ductility… if we don’t want to fail. Clay is not only the art of placing, but also of pressing, construction also comes from within. Terracotta sculptures seem to come to life from the inner cavity”. Paolo Annibali.

“Pediment” is a work composed of five female sculptures in painted terracotta, created between 2012 and 2014 by Paolo Annibali. The work represents five women of different sizes and postures, placed, as in the pediments of Greek temples, next to each other.

Starting from the left:

Girl putting make-up on. The sinuous and erotic body of the girl is lying on its left side. The arm on the corresponding side rests comfortably on a stack of three pillows, which yield to her weight. Her sensual body is covered by a soft dress, which draws voluptuous folds and hides her two young breasts; her hair is loose on her shoulders. The girl is depicted performing an apparently banal and typically feminine gesture: she is putting make-up on her eyes, with a brush (which she holds in her right hand) dipped in the colour contained in the shell of a sea shell, held with the fingers of her left hand. Her face betrays an empty expression, unfocused on what she is doing, while her eyes seem to be staring into the void.

Sybil. This is a sibyl, but her origin is unknown – it could be either the Cumaean or Apennine sibyl. She performs a gesture familiar to sibyls, namely that of reading divinatory and propitiatory signs in the water contained in a bowl. Only she glimpses the outline of her face, observes herself, sees her reflected image (deliberately produced plastically). The woman is seated on a parallelepipedalplinth, she has one leg forward and the other backwards, wearing a long, soft, low-cut dress, dear to the artist. Her face does not seem to betray any emotion, perhaps it is apparently moved by a faint hint of astonishment.

Tyche. Erect, seated on a rock-shaped plinth, stands the mythological figure of the Goddess Tyche. In Greek mythology she is the personification of fortune – among the Romans she was called Fortuna. Her peculiarity was to protect and preside over the prosperity of cities and states. Over time she became so important that, in the Hellenistic period, her portrayals varied from city to city – each had its own specific iconic version of the goddess – so much so that she wore a crown depicting the walls or features of the city to which she belonged. This modern version wears no crown, but a sweet, noble smile that illuminates her face, contented, soothing, her eyes half-closed. Her chin rests on the back of her left hand, placed over the knee of the corresponding leg. Her other arm is on her corresponding hip, and her hand rests gently on the ankle of her left foot – her left leg is in fact above the other, in a posture that is perhaps more masculine. A long, detailed dress, cadenced by wide, soft folds, crowns the entire figure.

Veronica. This is another reference, this time from the religious world. It is Saint Veronica, the pious woman who, seeing the Passion of Jesus carrying the cross and his face smeared with sweat and blood, wiped it with a linen cloth, on which remained the imprint of Jesus’ face (called Veronica’s veil). The Sixth Station of the Way of the Cross is dedicated to Saint Veronica. Her name is not mentioned in the canonical Gospels, being a medieval Christian ‘tradition’ concerning the face of Jesus, born from a reinterpretation of the original Greek name, Berenice, of which it is the Latin translation. Veronica sits on a polygonal plinth, her legs crossed, and the index finger of her left hand points to the veil soaked in blood and sweat. Here, Annibali traces this memory by hand drawing. However, the woman’s face does not show an emotion, an obvious state of mind, but an empty face, almost without depth, and her eyes aim at nothingness.

The line of fortune. The beautiful woman depicted lying on the ground, with a beautiful body and wearing a long, low-cut dress, plastic in its folds, is a fortune-teller. Palmistry is the art of describing the personality and/or predicting the fate of an individual through the study of the palm of their hand. Her gesture traces her identity: she is drawing or pointing to the line of fortune by means of a thin wooden rod; that is the line which starts at the base of the ring finger and ends at the centre of the palm. Her head is characterised by a bob hairdo, different from the other women in the sculpture, and her gorgeous face seems focused on the act, but without ardour, without expressions of sorrow or wonder.