Belle

Venere dei Cocci

"Venere dei Cocci” (Venus of the Shards) 2005:  based on Giorgione’s “Sleeping Venus”. One of the greatest paintings of the Renaissance, Sleeping Venus is an unusual, not to say mysterious work, even for an out of the ordinary painter like Giorgione.
This was one of the paintings that I absolutely had to do, but where was I to find my own Venus? None of the women who had come forward for the original casting remotely fitted the bill until one evening quite by chance I met Arianna, a lawyer from the tiny republic of San Marino. What is more, not only did she have the right face and the right figure, but she was also a keen cyclist providing her own red Cannondale racing bike (so expensive she was unwilling to tell me how much it cost!) to lean against the rock in the photo. The landscape is Arianna’s own San Marino with its distinctive fairy tale trio of castles perched on the mountain - but on the ridge below can be seen silhouetted against a livid sky, the concrete buildings, cranes and pylons of a monstrous modernity laying siege to the enchanted castle above.
This is one of the very few of the series to have been shot outdoors on a beautiful evening in May.

client:

La Voce di Romagna

print for sale: