Galleria Barovier & Toso

Modern and Contemporary Art

description

This large-scale work (290 x 200 cm) uses naturally dyed fabric instead of paint, with terracotta and white cotton stretched over a wooden frame to be hung like a painting. The textile pieces are meticulously cut and sewn into repeating blocks of interlocking octagons, circles and diamonds, each made up of forty-one individual pieces measuring 42 by 42 cm, precisely the width of Perugino's panel (55.5 by 42 cm). The design follows the elaborately tiled floor in Pietro Perugino's Ranieri Annunciation of circa 1487–89, now at the Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria in Perugia, reproducing the five rows of tiles visible in the painting. While faithful to the source, Jaensch flattens Perugino's steep perspective: every block is the same size across the full height of the textile, replacing recession with verticality. The naturally dyed cotton passes through successive dye baths, creating a barely perceptible gradation of tone that tempers the rigour of the geometric structure with a shifting warmth. As in Perugino's painting, where the floor already dominates and the figures of Gabriel and Mary appear almost incidental, the sacred protagonists are absent. The geometric pattern is no longer a setting for a sacred event but the sole protagonist.

The Ranieri Annunciation

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Galleria Barovier & Toso

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