Losanga, 1990

The print commissioned by a banking institute in Siena originates from two famous fifteenth-century Sienese paintings. Reproduced in the central area is the Biccherna panel1 by Sano di Pietro portraying a wedding ceremony, set in an architectural space defined by a square arch and decorated in the background by a dark curtain with floral motifs representing a starry sky; the arch is in turn inscribed in the courtyard characterized by a rhomboid plan of a small castle, encircled by a crenellated wall. The centre of the scene is hidden by the image of the planet Earth. Instead clearly visible on the architrave of the square arch is the cut-out figure of an elderly man seated on a throne who, in the allegory of the Buon Governo (Good Government, 1474) by Benvenuto di Giovanni, personifies the Town Administration of Siena; his face is hidden by a photographic reproduction of the Moon.2 The ensemble is inserted in a background image turned so that it resembles a rhombus and depicting a night-time sky, recalling the rhomboidal plan of the courtyard and the decoration of the curtain-backdrop.
The lozenge, also mentioned in the title, amplifies the framing of the crenellated wall, which includes the square arch that, in turn, seems to recall the frame of a stage. The succession of frames emphasizes the focal centre, that is, the huge planet, towards which the viewers' gazes also converge. In Paolini's poetics the planet symbolically represents (like all cosmic iconography) an imponderable and ungraspable dimension. The fifteenth-century composition thus becomes the theatre of a miraculous and mysterious event, “ruled” by the allegorical figure seated at the top, who, with his right hand, seems to indicate the central scene.3
The original collage on which the print is based is documented in the online Catalogue Raisonné of the works on paper at number GPC-0851.

1 A wooden panel which once formed a part of the book-cover of the account books in the Treasury of the Republic at Siena.
2 In the original panel, the man observes the black and white globe (alluding to Siena's coat of arms) he is holding in his left hand and that perhaps suggested to Paolini the inclusion of other spherical bodies.
3 The concealment, by way of the lunar sphere, of the sceptre held in his right hand, confers to the position of the latter the image of an indicating gesture.