Giorgio de Chirico

Private Collection, Milan
Galerie Cazeau-Béraudière, Paris (acquired from the above)
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Executed on cream wover paper, not laid down, attached to the overmount at intervals along the reverse of all four edges. All four extreme edges have a paper support and there are abrasions with some associated retouchings and paper losses, along all four edges, due to previous mounting. This work is in good condition. Colours: Overall fairly accurate in the printed catalogue illustration, although there is less yellow and the contrasts are more nuanced in the original.
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Oreste et Pelade is a beautiful example of de Chirico's graphic exploration of the architecture of the body, a recurrent metaphor in his metaphysical compositions. In order to enhance the tonal strength and dimensionality of the forms, de Chirico paints one of the figure's forearms with flesh-toned watercolour.  The technique has a trompe l'œil effect that sets the limb in sharp relief from the rest of the composition.

The picture takes its title from the Greek mythological character Orestes and his male guardian Pylades. Throughout the history of western art these two men have been portrayed defending one another and have come to symbolise the bonds of male friendship and fraternity (fig. 1). For de Chirico, however, the characters are yet another manifestation of his seated mannequin series and vehicles for further exploration of his metaphysical aesthetic. Throughout the late 1920s, the two seated figures were assigned different identities in works such as Archeologi, Le Muse in villeggiatura, La Famiglia del pittore (fig. 2) and Nobili e borghesi.

The term 'metaphysical' had first been given to de Chirico's paintings in 1914 by the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire and referred to the enigmatic quality of his urban landscapes. Taking his inspiration from the spatial distortions of the Cubists in the early 1910s, de Chirico emphasised the deep recesses and angularity of the Renaissance or Neo-Classical buildings and the ominously dark shadows that they cast across desolate piazzas. The setting for these pictures was usually a city centre, oddly devoid of any life or populated only by inanimate objects. When he wanted to convey an animate presence in these works, it was usually through the inclusion of mannequins. These lifeless props, often used by sketch artists as stand-ins for live models, became the personification of de Chirico's metaphysical pictures and powerful symbols of the irony inherent in his art.

Completed in 1928, Oreste et Pelade is one of his first renderings of two mannequins seated together in a pose which would later be incorporated in his paintings and sculpture. De Chirico explained his interest in this grouping and position in his 1938 text Naissance du mannequin: 'When I abandoned the idea of representing the mannequin standing (alone or coupled with another mannequin) [...] because despite their undeniable metaphysical sense - these mannequins were related too closely to the poetry of the puppet and to that of the duo in the old Italian melodrama.  I was struck, one day while visiting a Gothic cathedral, by the strange and mysterious impression made on me, by certain figures, representing seated saints and apostles [...]. The very short legs, covered by the folds of their clothing formed a sort of base, of indispensable foundation but only to sustain the torso-monument, and the arms naturally stretched out to proportion to the torso' (quoted in Nature According to De Chirico (exhibition catalogue), Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, 2010, pp. 139-140). 

FIG. 1, Offering by Orestes and Pylades (San Ildefonso Group), 10th century B.C., marble, Museo Del Prado, Madrid

FIG. 2, Giorgio de Chirico, La Famiglia del pittore, 1926, oil on canvas, Tate Gallery, London