CAMELOT – 2013 – 60×60
1. The legend of Excalibur
The Arthurian cycle and the legend of the sword in the stone were born from the miraculous episode that sees Arthur as protagonist. Thanks to a sorcery of the protector Merlino, the boy extracts from the stone the sword Excalibur, a magic moment that gives him the title of King. The Master wanted to underline with the color the wooded landscape, inspired by the Druids, priests from the Celtic people, a call that makes the scene magic and sacred. The history of Excalibur introduces the discovery of the Arthurian cycle through the canvas of Maurizio Perversi. The Master represents the key episodes of the legend in each of the small canvas that get together forming an image, which the soul is represented by the dragon and its jaws.
2.The round table
Emblem of the ideal kingdom of Camelot is the castle of King Arthur, where the twelve knights of the order gathered together with the aim of taking decisions for the government of the city. According to the myth, the round table was magically created by Merlino, and it hosted the knight leaving a free place to the one who would have reached the Holy Grail first, a privilege that, according to the legend, Parsifal had. Among the protagonists of the development of the story we also find Tristan and Lancelot. The round table is imagined by the Master as a spider web that unites among them the knights, symbol of the construction of a kingdom, over that we find a key image that introduces to the vision of some characters that will act against the city.
3. Geneva’s coronation
The Camelot castle appears in all its fairy majesty, that is accented by the crayon tones and the typical medieval lines. As it could watch over the whole composition, the castle illuminates the canvas, pointed out from away from the branch that crosses the painting. The light hacks on the whole wood and it allows to perceive a waterfall that recreates the lines of Arthur and Geneva, during the coronation of the queen.
4. The betrayal
The legend tells the love between Lancelot and Geneva, queen and wife of Arthur: this tragic and illicit betrayal was one of the causes of the fall of the kingdom of Camelot. The origin of the history that became the symbol of the amor cortese, resides in the passion of the knight for the queen. Arthur discovers the betrayal of the queen and sentences her to the pyre, while Lancelot runs away from Camelot. Both avoid the death, the King shows weakness in the application of the law of the kingdom and the doubt on his brings to the destruction of the union of the round table. The Master represents on the canvas the lovers in the moment of the betrayal, observed and silently judged by the eye of the dragon, symbol of an unfaithfulness that assumes tragic tones as the betrayal of the earth of origin, of the round table and of the oath of fidelity.
5. Merlin and the jaws of the dragon
One of the principal protagonists of the stories of Camelot is Merlin, Arthur’s protector and magician of the kingdom. The Master’s interpretation of the character fully makes the bond of Merlin with his own earth: his face emerges from the banks of the river, while his beard melts with the vortex of the waters. Close to the other magic element of the legend, the dragon, Merlin seems to protect the whole kingdom, also thanks to his hat of solar light that stings to the castle of Arthur assuming its same colors.
6. To the search of the Sacred Graal
The representation is closed with the sacred cup sought by the knights, the Holy Grail is as impalpable as the history that gravitates around it, it is transparent among the pure waters of the waterfall, as pure as the mission that the researchers are set to. Here the meaning of the work is mixed to the theme of Christianity: the two knights on a horse searching the Holy Grail are icon of the Templar order. The search of the magic object brings also the death of the Celtic magic, overpowered by the Christian precepts that will give life to the new England. The course of the river continues along the wood up to the invisible horizon, almost closing the magical parenthesis of the magic kingdom of Camelot.