Limbajul trupului în creația sculptorului Niccolo dell’Arca

Abstract

One of the eloquent examples at the beginning of the sculptors' preoccupations with rendering facial expressions, which are in a perfect relationship with body language, as they are manifested in real life, is demonstrated in the work "Compianto sul Cristo morto" (Mourning over the body of Christ), made at the beginning of the Renaissance by the Italian sculptor Niccolo dell'Arca. Without exaggerating, we can say that this statuary ensemble was solved in a masterful way by the one nicknamed at the time "magister figurarum de terra - the master of terracotta figures", the sculptor Niccolo dell' Arca, precisely at a time when the sculpture statuary still did not excel in conveying the inner feelings of the characters with such force and truthfulness. Entering the church of Santa Maria della Vita and reaching the chapel to the right of the high altar, the terracotta group greets the visitor like a theatrical epiphany, immediately drawing him into a mythic, deeply dramatic narrative infused with telluric pathos and eternal vitality . It is a very daring achievement for its time, a diamond of art and a disturbing synthesis of the late Gothic humanism manifested in the regions of Emiliana Romagna and Tuscany. A work that has the ability to touch the deepest states, disturbing but also seducing us at the same time.