Ottavio Leoni secondo Van Dyck: sul punto di stazione retrostante e L'Autoritratto con girasole

• Autores: Piera Giovanna Tordella
• Localización: Rivista d'arte: periodico internazionale di storia dell'arte medievale e moderna, ISSN 1122-0732, Nº. 2, 2012, págs. 297-312
• Idioma: italiano
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• Resumen

  • The first etched self-portrait by Ottavio Leoni, (c. 1621) based on the drawing held in the Marucelliana Library in Florence, was revisited by Anthonie van Dyck, who worked in Rome between 1622 and 1623, in the technically equivalent self-portrait (aproximately 1630), then altered by Jacob Neeffs for the title-page of the "Iconographia". The conceptual genesis of this work has been coherently ascribed by many scholars to the roman artist of Paduan origin.

    Van Dyck's "Self-portrait with Sunflower" held in the collection of the Duke of Westminster, has been interpreted according to different theories which mainly refer to the field of emblematics. This essay deals with this famous painting, proposing a new iconological inerpretation of the composition which undoubtedly enjoyed widespread favor. The analysis focused in particular on the gold chain's allegorical significance and the sunflower's symbolism. For the first time the sunflower that occupies most the right side of the painting, has been interpreted as an allusion to the mirror, the most important technical device for self-portraiture. At the same time, in Ripa's "Iconologia", the gold chain has been connected to the personification of Prospettiva.

    The originality of the portrait's vantage point, located behind its sitter, replaced the canonical foreshortened frontal position, mainly used by Ottavio Leoni, and the head's torsion, emphasized by further rotating the glance, are elements better understood and analyzed, both in their geometric and spatio-temporal meanings, thanks to modern rendering technologies (i.e. 2D computer graphics and 3D animation softwares).