99 There is the St. Sebastian’s tòpos, Christian martyr pierced by arrows and highly portrayed in art – from Perugino (1495), to Guido Reni (1625), to the touching Sebastiane (1976) directed by Derek Jarman – symbol of dignity in the endurance of pain. There is the Noli me tangere tòpos, the «don’t you keep me here» addressed to Mary Magdalene by Christ, ready to ascend to heaven – crystallized by Giotto (1305), by Correggio (1524), by Mimmo Paladino (2011) – which in the topical request for distancing, in the relational substance of that physical void, refers to the aim of the human upward tension. There is vulnerability. The Ecce Homo tòpos, Christ scourged and presented by Pilate to the crowd to determinate his fate, is the ostension of a divine body in all his human frailty. Among the most famous Ecce Homo, that of Antonello da Messina (1473), of Titian (1548), of Antoon van Dyck (1626). Contemporarily: in 1974, in Naples, at Studio Morra, Marina Abramović in Rhythm 0, motionless in front of a table set up with seventy-two objects – including a rose, some bread, a perfume, a bottle of wine, alcohol and matches, honey, chains and knives, a Polaroid and a loaded gun – put her fate into the bystanders’ hands, assuming in writing the responsibility that for six hours they could have decided whether and how to approach her. After a first moment in which the audience neared her with kindness, handing the rose or caressing her face, in front of her absolute passivity, the performance ended with a naked and wounded Abramović, spontaneously protected by a cordon of spectators after the gun, then thrown away by the furious gallery owner, was placed in her hand with her fingers on the trigger. At the end of the performance, Abramović streaked with tears walked towards the audience: no one was able to stare back at her. There is protection. The Galactotrofusa tòpos, the Nursing Madonna, dates back to Ancient Egypt with Isis nursing her son Horus, and merges with later Christian iconography to the point that many representations of Isis have been honoured as if they were Madonnas – because art favors the embrace between different cults even while holy wars, crusades and jihad continue to bloody the world. The Nursing Madonna iconography – from Leonardo (1490), to Jean Fouquet (1455), to Jan van Eyck (1436), to Correggio (1524) – often depicts a Madonna nursing not only the Child, but also martyrs, the weak and the oppressed, because protection cannot be just a matter between relatives, a pre-emption governed by ius sanguinis. Contemporarily: in 1994, Rineke Dijkstra produced a photographic series, The new mothers, in which young mothers with their newborn at the breast are portrayed in a clinical setting, a few hours after the birth. The sanctity of the composition then shifts entirely to the normalcy of a fatigued body, whose price paid is visible in the post-trauma of the physical event of childbirth, in the exhaustion of the livid dark circles, in the scar just sutured, blessed with a tired smile. The sense of sacredness explodes with even more strength in the humanity of flesh and of an event that takes place thousands of times a day, since world is world, since life is life, in the absolute miracle of normality. There is sharing. The Rückenfigur tòpos, the portrait of a figure from behind, often immersed in the view that opens up in front of him, is an invitation for the viewer to merge with the portrayed figure and to share the same position. From Giotto (1300), to Jan Vermeer (1660), to Caspar David Friedrich (1818), to several videogames whose graphics are first-person, it is the very notion of gaze that turns into a shared experience. Becoming comprehension. Contemporarily: in the photographic cycle started in 1995 Study of perspective, the dissident artist Ai Weiwei self-portrays himself from behind, in an invitation to share his own perspective, but he raises the bar further: in the foreground, belonging to him, there is is not his figure but just his middle finger, raised in front of symbolic places of the artistic and political system, such as Tiananmen Square, the White House, the Eiffel Tower. In order not to fall into the immobility of customary. In order to react, to question. In order to accept the challenge and to take a stand. In art as in life, it's all a matter of perspective. There is the search for identity. The Doppelgänger's tòpos, the alter-ego, intersects with the modus of the self-portrait to become a space for the construction of being, crucial in the ethical thematization both in the form of desire and in that of denunciation. Between Narcissus' self-love and Prometheus' love for humanity, not only Greek mythology but also Greek theater were the first to contribute to the investigation of identity through art: the word person descends from prósopon, mask, worn by the Greek actors to bring their character onto the stage, allowing the public to recognize themselves or to recognize the other than itself – which represents the reason why Max Pohlenz wrote that, thanks to the characters of the Greek theater and therefore to representation, «for the first time an ethical recognition is given to the individual
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