El gabinete de un aficionado

In Pittsburgh, Ohio, the legendary Hermann Raffke painting collection was exhibited for the first and only time in 1913. The central work is a canvas by Heinrich Kürz, precisely the one entitled "The Cabinet of an Amateur", which shows the collector seated among his paintings. The outstanding detail of the canvas is that it is also reproduced in the painting as part of the collection, so that the dizzying play of the painting within the painting, in turn within the painting, is repeated until «The Cabinet of a hobbyist »is just a dot. But the transformations that take place in the paintings within the painting are even more wonderful. Thus, from one reduction to another, in a Longhi the initially empty piazza suddenly appears populated with masks; donkeys, cloaked women, then a dromedary gradually disappear from a Moroccan landscape; a boxer receives, in a frame, an uppercut and in the last one he lies down on the canvas. And something terrible happens: the much admired canvas is the object of an attack; shortly after Raffke dies, who is buried in the pose he adopts on the canvas (sitting) together with the painting ...