EN – Current Exibition

of drawings by Cinzia Ortali, Clan Destino, viale Alfredo Baccarini n.21, Faenza (Italy). 
From 21th August 2024 to 8th December 2024.
The restaurant is open every day, except Tuesday, for lunch and dinner. For more information call (+39)0546 681327 or http://clandestinofaenza.it/

“Paralipomenes of the stories of Saint Jerome painted by Cesare Pronti for the choir of the oratory of the Augustinian fathers Rimini”, colored pencils paper, 35 × 70 approx., 2023

The series of six drawings on display here is inspired by the cycle of 24 monochrome canvases that Cesare Pronti (1626-1708) painted between 1680 and 1688 for the decorative apparatus of the choir of the oratory of San Girolamo in Rimini. Most of them have a particular hexagonal shape with four arched and concave sides.¹

[…] At the age of 29 he was ordained a priest and cardinal, and when Pope Liberius died, Girolamo was designated by all as the most worthy to succeed him. But since he had rebuked the lasciviousness of some monks and clerics, they, enraged, began to lay all sorts of traps for him: among other things, one night, they made him leave a woman’s dress on his bed. The saint rose, as usual, early in the morning and put on the robe that was on the bed believing it was his: then he went to church giving the opportunity to the evil-minded to whisper that there had certainly been a woman in his bed. Disgusted by such follies, Jerome went to Gregory, bishop of Constantinople, who instructed him in the sacred scriptures. Then he retired to the desert […]²

Not finding among the stories of Pronti and, as far as I know, not even in other painters, the episode of the saint in female clothes, betrayed by his brothers and for this reason decided to become a hermit, I tried to imagine it. The new episodes I have drawn do not respect the initial objective but certainly insist on some topoi of Baroque art: flying cherubs, abundance of draperies, bold poses. A young Jerome with the sinuous body of an absorbed Greek god looks ahead while a cherub shows him the cross as a warning to a life of chastity; an old, naked and emaciated Jerome, now a hermit, to whom the Jamaican musician Desmond Dekker appears from a space-time window, oval like a cameo! The drawings are monochrome to respect the reference model (Pronti) but varying the tones of red from the most purplish magenta to orange.

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“Giudizio Universale Minimo” markers, colored pencils on paper and collage of drawings, 33 x 48 cm, 2024

The series, still open, is characterized by the same compositional system inspired by the famous Last Judgement that can be seen in the porch of the Cathedral of Ferrara and that I have chosen as an iconographic reference: the first register with the dead coming out of the tombs, in the central band, reduced to a minimum. The path of the Blessed to the left and of the damned to the right which in this case takes the form of a labyrinth. Finally, the upper band represents the almond that frames the divine majesty that in some drawings is personified, at the center of a multicolored sunburst, which sets or rises, by a partially damaged stone head of probable South American origin.

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1. To learn more about the cycle, please refer to the article by Alessandro Giovanardi, “L’ammirabile fatica” di Cesare Pronti: una “fabula mystica”” per San Girolamo, “l’Arco” Annual of culture published by the Cassa di Risparmio Foundation of Rimini, monographic issue 2016-2017 pp. 10-33.
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2. To learn about the history of the life of St. Jerome, see Jacopo da Varagine, Leggenda aurea, translated from Latin by Cecilia Lisi, Florence, 1990, pp. 663 – 668.
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