El umbral de la sombra

From the Candlestick (1582) to the Furores (1585), the cross between philosophy, literature and painting constitutes one of the nuclei of the thought of Giordano Bruno (1548-1600). The series of seven "Italian works" opens with a comedy whose protagonist is a painter-philosopher and closes with a dialogue in which a philosopher-painter paints and comments on images. Philosophizing (the myth of the cave) and painting (the myth of the origins of painting) are for Nolano starting from the shadows in the desperate attempt to go beyond the threshold. In light of this theme, documented with a precious iconographic cast, Nuccio Ordine analyzes the genesis and development of Bruno's Italian work, showing the deep unity that unites the Parisian play to the six London dialogues. It is a work conceived within a program in which the Candlestick serves as an overture for the presentation of a series of themes that will be developed in the successive movements of the "new philosophy". In the name of man's infinite relationships with nature and knowledge, Bruno blends heaven and earth, form and matter, religion and civil life, dialogue and representation, the serious and the comic. And he does so knowing that every transgression generates a new awareness of himself and the world.