USAŠ - DAWN AFTER LOVE

The painting shows a haloed female nude, lying softly on a bed covered with red fabric. The woman looks towards the observer and seems softly relaxed. An intense, yellowish light comes from the left, creating a scene of strong contrast. The red cloth darkens and loses its dazzling brilliance as the eye moves to the right of the subject, in the most shadowed part. Does it suggest a void? An absence? The gaze cannot remain in that void; it follows the drapes that guide it towards the upper right corner of the painting, where the folds transform into wings that frame a background with a sixteenth-century flavour. It is a dawn that rises, sliding between distant mountains, reflected in the waters of still lakes where neither the wind nor humanity manifest their presence. It is the world a moment before it wakes up ... in the foreground meanwhile the ritual of love has concluded, by the light of a candle that sends its last intense flashes before going out, leaving Usas, the sacred officiant, free to enter the sweet oblivion of a restorative sleep. Tomorrow she will give birth to the new sun generated by copulation.
USAS is the Sanskrit name of the goddess “Aurora” (Alba – Sunrise - Down) also venerated by the Latins and in addition to "dawn", it also means "lover" and "desire".
Everything I have just written is the total fruit of my personal mythological delirium. In this ambiguity everyone can let their imagination run free to imagine any beginning, end or context for the scene represented. S.B.