#8 breve | Giovanni Bellini, Allegoria sacra

Uffizi | Fabbriche di Storie

GIOVANNI BELLINI |

Allegoria sacra |

Uffizi, Sala 20 |

Versione breve | La narrazione è di Samira Lahhane, la voce di Micaela Casalboni |

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Giovanni Bellini | Holy Allegory | Room 20

Silence. I close my eyes, drag my feet over a smooth, cold surface. A floor in the finest marble takes me back to a distant past, when I was a child. I open my eyes and I am not alone: women, children, young and old men, crowd onto a large terrace overlooking a lake. It seems like a meeting, but it is not. There are prayers, but people are not looking at each other.

The terrace is fenced, but with an opening leading down to the lake. The doors to my house were always open too. My father was a generous person. He used to say that those who needed help were to feel welcome.

The Holy Allegory by Giovanni Bellini is one of the most mysterious works in art history. When it was painted, at the end of the 15th century, profane allegories were widespread, but not holy ones. Like the life of every individual, this artwork is unique, without comparison.

We are in an indefinite, “suspended” time. Who these enigmatic figures are, we cannot say with any certainty. For more than a century, art historians have been racking their brains trying to interpret a painting that, in the intention of the person who commissioned it, should have been understood only by a circle of well-read people. Of the many hypotheses proposed, the one I find most fascinating was posited by Gustav Ludwig. In 1902, he interpreted the terrace as the Garden of Eden, where the soul’s journey into Heaven starts. The soul, represented by the dressed child sitting on a cushion, is waiting to be judged by the Virgin, the saints behind her and the allegory of Justice. The two men standing on the right are identified as patron saints of the soul before the celestial court. On the other side of the terrace, the landscape alludes to the route taken by the soul to flee vice (represented by the centaur tempting the hermit) and arrive in Heaven, thanks to virtues such as patience, humility and abstinence, as represented by the donkey, the flock of sheep and the goat.

There is nothing exotic in the scene on the other side of the lake. If there is such a thing as a “different” place, it is the terrace. And yet, this is where the passage from non-communication to communication is played out. What will happen when the figures begin to act? Will Mary raise her eyes first, triggering the event that everyone is waiting for? Or will the child on the cushion stand up?

I had trouble communicating too, but I had a power inside: the encounter with my husband. Our journey was made of many sacrifices, I never stopped studying, “asking knowledge”, as we say in Arabic. The student is the “one who asks”. Along the way, I rediscovered something my father had taught me: the importance of keeping doors open. And so I became a mediator.

Like the clear water of this lake, which is a chromatic link between the terrace and the bank on the opposite side, leading to the sheer rocks, the village and the castle towering over the dense woods.

Then, there are the mountains, which I often dream about at night. I dream of climbing impervious paths, which is a bit like life. But in the end, I always reach my destination. And when I get to the top, I know I have made it.

I open my eyes. Mary lifts her gaze, and the conversation begins.