Ars Artis Ceccarelli

Tra la pittura e la scultura non trovo altra differenza, senonché lo scultore conduce le sue opere con maggior fatica di corpo che il pittore, ed il pittore conduce le opere sue con maggior fatica di mente. (Leonardo da Vinci)

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Amphora

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cm.39x55,5x26 - 1996

 

The broken vessel lay at the bottom of the Tuscan Tyrrhenian sea, twenty meters down, gently caressed by the sea grass lightly waving by the flux of constant undercurrents. 

Fully geared up for diving, amazed by the accidental finding and with some trepidation, I was admiring the relic of a great ‘orcio’, an ancient roman jar used for oil or wine transport, almost man size. 

Not far from it was the amphora. 

Both wounded victims of some ancient shipwreck, rested in the golf or Baratti, under the fortified village of Populonia, high up on top of the sea-facing proud hill-brow …  in the ancient land of the Etruscans, where my remote ancestors wrought their future.

The water was clear and the glittering with nested rims of oval light, refracted down from the waves above, wavering restless over the old artefacts, that gave their perpetual immobility the semblance of some animation, even hope for the future. 

The terracotta amphora, fastened to the sea bottom, was gaping open and irreparably fractured, aggrieved with sediments of sea moss and sand, yet encrusted with barnacles.

It gave a strong impression of quiet and resigned acceptance of its enduring misfortune. 

Years later working in the studio with wax and fire, when I was searching for inspiration and seeking a convincing form, from its remote meanders, unexpected, memory struck-back with the images of an orphan, broken amphora, forgotten by centuries, and in need of proper mending. 

So with patient work the wounds were healed by the daring inclusion of definite flat plates, intersecting its rotund convexity with occlusive planes. 

The full roundness of the original feminine form remaining only an illusion, worth previous recollections of things way past. 

Finally, cast in immortal bronze, the amphora sits well reconciled with fate, contented and rested on its strong tripod, now looking to the posterity, for a long, long tome to come.

 

Giorgio Attilio Ceccarelli

 

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