SARABAND AT TWILIGHT

The painting illustrates a scene set on a beach at dusk where zanni of “Callottian” workmanship and young women dance wildly around the fire in a carnivalesque and Dionysian atmosphere. In the periods in which the people were allowed to mask themselves, they “slipped” inexorably into the Dionysian world of drunkenness, celebrating what remained of the ancient Saturnalia, “pagan” residues that have come down to us as carnival celebrations, tolerated albeit with suspicion by the Roman ecclesiastical hierarchies. The loss of control, the predominance of the “low” instincts of the flesh was tolerated, albeit for a short period during the year, in contrast to the rigidly ascetic-spiritual model normally observed in a world that was still too theocentric.
The idea of the painting derives from the infernal sarabands of the Middle Ages, from popular and folk festivals linked to the cycle of the seasons, to the earth and agriculture, therefore to Demeter, goddess of the earth and the fields; to Hades, the deity of the underground and the underworld, from whose celebrations emanates a pagan reminiscence not entirely tamed by the many centuries of moral and temporal domination of the cult of Christ and the church established in his name. From all this, popular masks were born, later refined: first Zanni Demoniaci like those of Jacques Callot, crude and indistinct, lascivious, grossly popular, then Cerretani barkers of ancient city and village fairs; Arlecchini, Harlekins, Hoillequins, the root of whose name is lost in legends and tales of half of Europe; the Pulcinelli, also bearers of an atavistic and mythical hunger and, gradually scrolling, less famous but equally picturesque names of various Captains (Spazzamonti, Spezzaferro, Fracassa……), Sganarielli, Frittellini, Trastulli and finally the “evocative” name of Meo Squaquara! Grotesque masks that organize themselves around a form of theatrical representation that is strongly popular and in direct contrast with the church and the ruling class whose filth and abuse they denounced. They represented and kept alive a world and a frontier culture that does not conform, that does not lower its head in front of the power of ascetic ideals, but that remains anchored to the world and its matter, sometimes tragicomic like the atavistic hunger of the Zanni, Harlequin and Pulcinella. For this reason, in the 17th century they were expelled from Italy by a papal bull. They thus spread throughout Europe, making the Commedia dell’Arte immortal.
S.B.