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Rating: “In the fresco, I am one of the background figures” (Luther Blissett from “Q”.)
Recently a friend of mine pointed out how the greatest flaw of a film, albeit beautiful, like “La Grande Bellezza” lies in the abuse that the title has undergone, not always appropriately, in being used as a metaphor for any ugliness of this country. Following a parallel thought, I focused on the fact that the fate of this film is (at least in the immediate) in not being, across the board, understood. By the human fauna it is inspired by (the list is long, take your pick), by those who stop their judgment at the mockery of the interested patronage of Medusa (it is so “italosinistraradicale” that it almost moved me) as if, with the due proportions, we should judge Piero della Francesca (and I mention one at random) because he was a “servant” of fraudsters like Federico da Montefeltro or Sigismondo Malatesta. Even certain admirers of Sorrentino have raised objections (and I unknowingly must never have been one, evidently, but, after all, I have never been the man I once was).
I have never been. This comes to mind not because at the moment I am writing my reader is passing the 2.0 version of “Hai paura del buio?” but because I have never surrendered to the downgrading of Pluto and, like him, I know that the Sun and the other planets still embrace me and couldn’t care less about us stupid humans and our imaginary lines (cit.). Curious, though, the parallelism with Sorrentino’s film. There are people who still haven’t realized that Agnelli in ’97 was referring precisely to them (yes, little friend who can define yourself only through your tastes, I’m talking about you, even if I know you won’t understand).
If you have wondered what all this has to do with Memling (apart from certifying your normality) I can answer by inviting you to forget that you don’t like sacred art (it’s just a matter of language: in the 1400s and in other historical periods it was the easiest way to share matters even outside religion, just as today Banksy's graffiti are collateral to the socio-political picture) and focus only on the background of this work. Forgetting the mystical sweetness emanating from the scene of the central panel, the dramatic violence and all the symbolic subtext of the left panel which contrasts with the typically biblical metaphysics of the right. Forget about the full and triumphant colors that exalt the furnishings, opulent and lavish, placed as an icon of a Bruges that was about to experience the last ray of true glory (speaking of extra-religious communication) before History made it become first "the Dead" and then marbled it in a typically tourist dimension well portrayed by that little gem that is “In Bruges”. A painting should be looked at for a long time and “‘daverizzandovi’” on that background it is inevitable that the vertigo of sudden depth compared to the figures in the foreground, mixed with an incongruous use of perspective proportions, instead of leading you to ask whether this magnificent imperfection is deliberate or not, ends up sending you into another universe of contemplation, not necessarily religious.
The symbolic meaning of one of the most ethereal Virgins ever depicted and of the child mystically offering the ring to Saint Catherine, of the hagiographic events of the other three saints (seven if you consider those painted on the back of the side panels with the patrons) matters little because it is the imperfect and dazzling vision that strikes the eyes and heart, literally crystallizing to be the only possible language: vertical and kaleidoscopic.
It is the same concept of “beauty” that exudes from this triptych which, only because Art must be ambiguous by definition, forces one to see a very secular and civil message in so much religious piety: now you can go back and read the long introduction to this writing.
It’s an oil on panel that covers approximately three meters and thirty centimeters in width and a meter and eighty in height across all three panels, and it is located at the Hospital of St. John (home of the Memling Museum) in Bruges. It is supposed that the great German, endowed with intimate but never hermetic elegance, “naturalized” as Flemish painted it in the second half of the 1470s. It is one of the symbolic works in the second wave of the so-called primitive Flemish, one of those that definitively closes (a direct look at an era that refused to die even as it was already crumbling) the flowering season of mercantile patronage in Bruges. Shortly thereafter, Flanders would experience one of the most disastrous periods in its history and the art of that corner of the world would feel it: certainly not from a qualitative point of view but surely expressively, which would lead, among others, to Massys, Bosch, Brueghel the Elder to close with the definitive division of the 1600s that would see the Dutch like Rembrandt on one side and the baroque of Rubens on the other.
A work of its time but also compellingly ours.
Mo.
P.S. It may be a commercial "trick" but the “remake” of “Hai paura del buio?” is a good album with some worthy gems (like the almost gothic remake by Bachi da Pietra of “Punto G” or the paradoxical youthful punk of Ministri in “Sui giovani d’oggi ci scatarro su” and moreover “Male di Miele” would have pleased Trellheim) but perhaps it could have been a bit bolder: inviting someone outside the usual “circle” and/or the usual cultural undergrowth of reference to collaborate, for example (we all already know Capovilla’s rowdy singing). Sure, there are Bennato and Finardi you’ll tell me. I reply: well...
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