Symbol and Alchemy in the Art of Luisa Del Campana

    

The Exhibition of Luisa Del Campana, "Time of the Middle Ages", not only transports us into that world of legends, fairy tales, weapons and heroes that our contemporary imaginary commonly associates "historical" Middle Ages time, but invites us to take a  fascinating and intriguing, suspended  journey between dreams and signs, symbols and allegories. Invites us to follow an itinerary, which brings us to the boundaries between reality and imaginary - or where the imagination is part of reality - in a place of choice, a place "no place" and "timeless".
A place where magic still may happen, and where man can still hope to be an alchemist, transforming base metal into gold..., or it may try to achieve a profound inner and spiritual elevation!

   Place of magic and spells, but also "real" and "carnal" where those who can "see" and "think with their heart" can receive unimaginable gifts. But for this we need to go beyond brushstrokes, or pictures, or images, or vice versa: "There are things - St. Augustine said - things that are just things and others that are also signs… Among these signs, some are only signals, or signs of other attributes, and some of the symbols ", and therefore we need to go beyond things and what at first glance seem to mean, and enter into the world of" symbols "that speak to those who can  see and can listen.

  But if in  medieval time "The symbol is a way of thinking and feeling and nnature, typical of Middle age authors , which does not feel the slightest need to inform readers of their  semantic intentions or teaching, or precisely define the terms they will use "(M. Pastoureau), today, took our  eyes and hearts poisoned by thousands and thousands of pictures poison the mind by means of a game that is as unctuously aestheticising as it is deceptive, maybe a clue, of readings among the works of Luisa Del Campana, maybe be useful. With quick strokes we see some of them.

A characteristic of this ascending artist, beside the refined  use of symbols, is the wise use of colours, which now clarify, strengthen, and now reaffirm the symbols;  colours used by the artist not only as a physical phenomenon and perceptive, but as a building cultural complex from which you can "understand" all sorts of otherwise incomprehensible reality.
Take, for example, the work entitled Firefitz, which shows an armed knight on a “white” drape, a  “black Mother", and their baby.
  The  "black" colour in the face of the Mother here has a superior sense(not lower as commonly interpret), which symbolizes the state of principal essentially non-event: joined the "white" of the Father, the two are not - expressed and demonstrated, the immortal and mortal, "Self" and ' "I", as in other latitudes cultural Krishna "black" and Arjuna "white". The two colours also refer to Heaven and the Earth, considering that here is the black refers to Heaven (as well as in the case of black Madonna) and the white land. The child, son of both, is ready to fight, as shown by arrow, a symbol representing the solar rays of the sun, attribute the warrior, and red shoes, a symbol of fire, fire and blood, and therefore power and strength.

 But apart from the complex symbolism and iconic colour, it is remarked  all the colours who used here (but also in other works) Artist with  alchemistical value: black-white-red-yellow (gold), that this Zosimus step helps us to understand: "Take the Philosopher's Stone, the black, white, red and yellow… from its bitterness will colour and change everything"!
The enriched Draco Magnus , in the symbolism of colours, the previous work, because the white (horse) and yellow-gold (Knight) ready to fight against the dragon - the power symbolism, in the west, Chthonian, destructive, malicious -- comes out from the "grey" silver colour similar to  women value as can see from the grey-silver-female-moon, and therefore complementary knight-gold-men.
To remain in the symbolism of the knight, the great expressive force and Energy retention, and therefore ready to explode, furious and successful, the warrior who represents the motionless, and that symbolizes the ' "Eternal Now", nunc stans, or the state of being unconditional, this non-dual; easy reference to the “motionless engine" but also wu-wei>, all ' "act without acting" Taoist. In the iconography the motionless and impossibility expresses inflexibility, but also superhuman impartiality. What better image, from conceiving iconographical, for a warrior?
The gold-yellow heart come out more in Vegliante fuori le mura. The gold balance of all quality metal, is the sun, lighting, which is bright, lasting and incorruptible, is the quality of the Sacred.
     The yellow-gold from the point of view of the symbolism of colours is "the closest colour to light", as Goethe said, and from the point of view alchemical symbolizes "the living gold", produced on interaction between sulphur and silver alive , male and female principle is the "Great Work" we flows to another oil painting of Del Campana Synthesis alchemic, and explicitly declared alchemistic inspiration.
In this work stands a large sun whose rays, reflected in a mirror, they strike an alembic. Il Sole (gold) is the supreme cosmic power, the centre of knowledge and intuitive, because the son of the god of heaven, which inherits one of the most important attributes of this god: see everything and, consequently, know everything. "There is nothing more visible throughout the world - says Dante - more worthy of the sun to serve as a symbol of God, because it illuminates with life visible first to him, then to all celestial bodies and land." That is why India Sûrya is in the eye of Varuna, Persia is to Ahura Mazda, Greece Helios is the eye of Zeus, Egypt is in the eye of Ra.
   The alchemy considered the "gold prepared for the work or sulphur philosophical, as opposed to the moon and mercury, which is lunar. But perhaps the concept prevails alchemy of the sun in homine, seen as invisible substance that comes from the sun and helps heavenly fire unborn humans. Indeed sun rays strike a circle inscribed in a square mirror: mirror of that, purified, is in the cucurbit (the boiler where the substance is introduced for distilling) an alembic born, properly distilled and purified, the strength and energy to fertilize the earth.
             Much more - in this magical, fascinating and complex path that offers fine art Luisa Del Campana - tracks to follow, many clues to unravel, many still signs to decipher, in a continuous and serqua joyous image, and allegories symbols, iconography, and colouristic hermetic, which are interwoven, balances, to the hearts and minds of the closer  viewer.
     Thus, voluntarily leave the problem unsolved in part, the image of the Dialectic philosophically paradoxical; "sophia" unrolls the spindle.
     The spindle and distaff and, as the action of spinning symbolize life and durability. Time is also a symbol of Magna Mater, which ranks on a mountain of stone, or in cavities in your world (which is why the time is considered an attribute of all goddesses Mothers).

The thread is what binds the universe together and which the universe is interwoven. So is the fate yarn and fabric from a divine power. The spiral rotating zone, in fact, symbolizes the revolutions of the universe, while spin and weave are traditionally some aspects of the feminine principle, or its ability to "weave destiny." But the image of Magna Mater-Sophia Dialectic gives us yet another mystery, deep and seemingly insoluble: a face devoid of forms, blank, which is reflected in a empty mirror!

     One clue: the feminine principle is so adept at weaving the destiny, but is also able weaving the veil of the world of illusion! "True art is to conceal art.”

Francesco Solitario
University of Siena/Arezzo