Contrappunto, 1994

At the centre of a black sheet of paper is a reproduction of the painting Tribuna of the Uffizi (1776) by Johann Zoffany, cropped around the sides to obtain a vertical format. The painting gallery of the Tribuna is overlapped by a multitude of gilt frames in various sizes: some of them, which are empty, frame the details of the eighteenth-century painting, while others, complete with a white passepartout, enclose other details from the same painting, either reflected horizontally or reversed; a frame at the upper edge of the sheet surrounds a portion of black paper; among the small frames aligned at the centre, the one to the left encloses the image of four other gilt frames. Standing out to the right is the drawing of a reversed canvas, in an oblique position, which converses with Titian's Venus of Urbino, presented by the two male figures in the foreground to the right in the painting. However, the canvas seen from the verso seems to also be conversing with the blank rectangle, which conceals Raphael's Saint John the Baptist as a Boy situated on the back wall of the Tribuna. Located in the same diagonal of the overturned canvas and of the blank rectangle is another detail from a reversed canvas; this, in turn, converses with the detail of the frame with a passepartout or the blank surface situated at the opposite edge of the sheet.
The kaleidoscopic game of multiplication and overlaps, developed on different optical planes and based on the opposition between complementary elements – on the concept of the counterpoint, as the title tells us – offers a complex gallery of frames, which questions the idea of the painting itself. The same painting as always, liable to assuming endless faces, but always equal to itself: a spatial painting that defines a particular dimension, a scenic space that hosts the theatre of representation.
The iconographic theme can also be found in the print titled Per “Cento luoghi di-versi. Un viaggio in Italia”, made in 2020 (GPE-0143), as well as in a work on paper from 1996 (GPC-1756).
The original collage on which the print is based is documented in the online Catalogue Raisonné of the works on paper at number GPC-0879.