Vatican Museums

In the course of Tano Festa’s series of in-depth studies inspired by the infinite repertoire of images offered by the Sistine Chapel, the artist chose various techniques to rework the details of Michelangelo’s frescoes. For The dying Militiaman he used an enlargement of an historic Alinari photograph, applied to a large board and surrounded by a thin black frame. Enclosed between two bright red asymmetrical parentheses, the outcome is an image of great visual impact: defining the face of Adam, the artist transforms the meaning of his gaze that, without a visible aim, is directed towards to an unnamed “elsewhere”. A further shift results from the title the artist has chosen for his work, suggesting the classic formal model, thus interweaving birth and death and radically modifying the semantic value of the subject of inspiration.