(Volos, Greece 1888–1978 Rome)
La liberazione di Andromeda, 1939, signed, oil on canvas, 55 x 45 cm, framed

This work is registered in the Fondazione Giorgio
e Isa de Chirico under no. 0069/11/03 OT and is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity.

Provenance:
European Private Collection

The Liberation of Andromeda fully expresses de Chirico’s love of mythology and the classical world. All of the narrative elements are present in the composition: Andromeda offered as a sacrifice and chained to the cliff to atone for her mother’s vanity, the sea monster sent by a vengeful Poseidon and Perseus rushing to her aid in the background.
Contrary to the description in the myth, in which the daughter of the King of Ethiopia is crying, fearful, shaken by the waves of a stormy sea, de Chirico depicts her in a pose reminiscent of a classical statue. She is sitting peacefully on the cliff on a softly draped cloth.
The reference to classicism is evident in the composition, making use of a technique that is itself “ancient”, i.e. before the invention of Renaissance linear perspective. Far from following any geometric logic, this work’s perspective is intuitive and does not dictate the spatial layout of the painting. Instead, the focus is on the object – a style of composition that is typical of classical antiquity rather than Gothic or medieval art.
As Luca Massimo Barbero maintains: “the repetition of themes, or even works in de Chirico, is the result of the firm Nietzschean conviction that ‘the past and the present are one, that is to say, with all their diversity identical in all that is typical and [...] a motionless structure of a value that cannot alter and a significance that is always the same’”.
And yet in this continuous cycle each repetition appears different from the previous one, like a musical performance. The feeling of each composition changes as a result of the events’ different position in time.