| Abstract |
Ezio Albrile, Dipingere il Tempo. I Magi da Vezzolano a Fiorenzuola
Painting Time. The Magi from Vezzolano to Fiorenzuola
The evangelical Magi are an important testimony to the meeting between cultures in the ancient world, between Christianity and Iranian religiousness. The evidence is in a Latin work, the Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum, according to which the Persian Magi every year went up the Mountain of Victories (Mons victorialis) –on whose top there was a cavern, a spring and some trees – to await a star that had in itself the image of a child and must be the sign of the birth of the Great King. In turn the Opus is the transcript of more ancient texts written in Syriac, the most important of which is the Chronicle of Zuqnīn. These are materials drawn on by the masters of painterly art that represented the episode over the centuries. The article gives two examples of medieval painting in which figuration of the Magi is linked to colour. The first one originates from the abbey of Santa Maria di Vezzolano (Asti), and is a fresco attributed to the so-called “Montiglio Artist” in which the three ages of the Magi are rendered with chromatic dualism involving red and white. There is a skilful admixture between the dualism, peculiar to the Iranian world, and “aeonic” triplicity, the three ages in which Western art has fixed them. The second originates from the San Fiorenzo Collegiate church at Fiorenzuola d’Arda (Piacenza), where between 1492 and 1493 anonymous craftsmen painted a Nativity in which there stand out the three Kings dressed in clothes referable to three base colours, an expression of astrological symbolism.
Key words: Evangelical Magi, Colours, Medieval Art, Dualism, Astrology, Zoroastrianism.
Ezio Albrile (Torino 1962) da anni si occupa delle interazioni fra mondo iranico e le forme di religiosità dualistica tipiche dell’ellenismo e della tarda antichità (ermetismo, gnosticismo, manicheismo, etc.). È docente di Storia religiosa dell’Iran e dell’Asia centrale presso il CESMEO di Torino. Si occupa anche di divulgazione culturale sulle stesse tematiche.