Marcello Vettor Cassinari - Christ

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 likeness was 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 pervaded the entire history of Western art. From the first iconic representations of the early Christian and early Middle Ages, we gradually moved on to increasingly naturalistic (beginning with the Renaissance) or realistic (typical of Flemish art) depictions.

The elaborate compositions conceived by Marcello Vettor Cassinari, as well as his numerous paintings of the female nude, always inspire in-depth exploration of form, a central theme in this artist's work. Indeed, the exaltation of plasticity is one of the most salient characteristics of Cassinari's pictorial style. In these paintings, for example, the presence of Christ's face becomes a pretext for a perfect representation of the plasticity of a suffering and highly distinctive physiognomy. The material, evocatively and with a strong reference to seventeenth-century art, takes shape from the decontextualized space thanks to the revealing action of light. In exalting volumes, however, Vettor Cassinari adopts a truly original pictorial style that makes his work unique. The objects are rendered with absolute fidelity to the sensory element, almost in a Flemish hyperrealism, a testament to this painter's extraordinary technique. But, at the same time, this realism is tainted by the artist himself in an expressionist style that has a lived-in feel.

Marcello Vettor Cassinari was born in Milan in 1930 and began painting at a young age, enrolling at the Cimabue Academy of Art and completing his studies first at the Brera School of Artifices, then at the Castello Sforzesco School of Art and the Brera School of Nude Painting. After several years working in illustration, in the mid-1960s he began to establish himself as a painter and participated in numerous exhibitions, both in Italy and abroad, always receiving widespread recognition. A renowned portraitist, in the 1980s and 1990s he also explored sculpture and ceramics, decorating several plates.

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