Franco Gulino - Face of Christ (from Caravaggio's The Calling of Saint Matthew)

The iconographic subject of Christ's face has ancient origins and is connected to the legend of Veronica. The episode in which Christ's true features were imprinted on a cloth used by a woman to wipe his face is also recounted in the Gospels. This woman was identified as Veronica, likely due to the similarity with the Latin words "Vera Icon." Since the early Christian era, the face of Christ has been the object of particular veneration. Its depiction has spanned the entire history of Western art. From the first iconic representations of the early Christian and early Middle Ages, we gradually arrived at increasingly naturalistic (starting in the Renaissance) or realistic (typical of Flemish art) descriptions. This face of Christ was taken from Caravaggio's famous work, "The Calling of Saint Matthew," created between 1599 and 1610 for the Contarelli Chapel in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome.

In this work, the artist Gulino demonstrates his complete adherence to the Caravaggio model. Indeed, with extraordinary technique, he perfectly replicates the face of Christ as it appears in "The Calling of Saint Matthew." When drawing inspiration from Caravaggio, the use of light within the work's space is obviously crucial. Gulino demonstrates his ability to rise to this challenge, successfully bringing the figure of Christ out of the dark background with great visual impact, precisely through the action of light. His painterly touch is light and nuanced in depicting the complexion, yet decisive in delineating the deep shadows that cross the figure. Everything is rendered with perfect naturalism, demonstrating the artist's skill.

Franco Accursio Gulino, painter, sculptor, poet, and video artist, was born in Sciacca in 1949. Since the beginning of his career, he has received important recognition and awards and has participated in numerous exhibitions. His solo exhibition, Design and the Embalmer, was presented in New York at the Italian Cultural Institute (1997) and the following year at The Art Gallery at Brooklyn College and at the Allen Priebe Gallery in Wisconsin. In 1999, In/Out, curated by “La centrale dell'arte” of Rome, was presented at the Cantieri Culturali della Zisa in Palermo. In 2011, the exhibition Camminanti opened in Nairobi, Kenya, a word that captures the history of migrants, illegal immigrants, and men on the move and in transformation, to whom Gulino has dedicated his painting for over twenty years. In 2019 he was invited to exhibit at the 1st St. Moritz Biennial in Switzerland, and in the same year the works from the Black Friday cycle were exhibited in a solo exhibition at the Hôtel de Paris in Monte-Carlo.

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