May discounts
8968 Musca Depicta
There’s a fly on the painting
Curated by Sylvia Ferino. Texts by Sylvia Ferino, André Chastel, Giuseppe Olmi, Carlo Ossola, Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi
2024 / 188 PAGES.
Language: Italian/English
The new edition of the volume Musca Depicta, printed by Franco Maria Ricci in 1984, is presented alongside an exhibition of the same name, on the topic of the presence of the fly in art, held at the Labirinto della Masone.
The book opens with an essay by curator and editor Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, narrating the appearance of the fly – as diverse as it is enigmatic – in visual arts, developing a journey that shifts between the works on display and external references. In some cases, the fly symbolises the devil, while in others it appears as a clever camouflage for the artist; its role in the Vanitas genre and in still lifes is quite clear. In the wake of previous traditions, contemporary art celebrates the importance of the “useless” fly. This essay is followed by a crucial text by André Chastel, the most comprehensive starting point for any art history study on the subject, and a text by Carlo Ossola, which traces the presence of flies in literature by collecting the most significant passages on the topic. The volume ends with an essay by Giuseppe Olmi and Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi, focused on the scientific representation of the fly. A vast iconographic apparatus accompanies and enhances all these texts, challenging readers in a constant “fly hunt.”