Chiara C. Rizzarda's Blog, page 13

#WerewolvesWednesday: The Wolf-Leader (9)

A werewolf story by Alexandre Dumas père.

Chapter IX: The Wolf-Leader

Thibault, fleeing from Madame Polet’s threats and her farm servants’ weapons, turned instinctively towards the forest, thinking to take shelter within it should he chance to come across one of the enemy, for he knew that no one would venture to follow him there for fear of any lurking dangers. Not that Thibault had much to fear, whatever kind of enemy he met, now that he was armed with the diabolical power he had received from the wolf. He had only to send them where he had sent the widow’s pig, and he was sure of being rid of them. Nevertheless, conscious of a certain tightening of the heart when from time to time the thought of Marcotte came back to him, he acknowledged to himself that, however anxious to be rid of them, one could not send men to the devil quite as readily as one sent pigs.

While thus reflecting on the terrible power he possessed, and looking back at intervals to see if there were any immediate need to put it into use, Thibault, by the time night fell, had reached the rear of Pisseleu. It was an autumn night, dark and stormy, with a wind that tore the yellowing leaves from the trees, and wandered through the forest ways with melancholy sighs and meanings.

These funereal voices of the wind were interrupted from time to time by the hooting of the owls, which sounded like the cries of lost travelers hailing one another. But all these sounds were familiar to Thibault and made very little impression upon him. Moreover, he had taken the precaution, on first entering the forest, of cutting a stick, four feet long, from a chestnut tree, and, adept as he was with the quarterstaff, he was ready, armed thus, to withstand the attack of any four men. So he entered the forest with all boldness of heart at the spot which is known to this day as the Wolfs’ Heath. He had been walking for some minutes along a dark and narrow glade, cursing as he went the foolish whims of women who, for no reason whatever, preferred a weak and timid child to a brave, strong, full-grown man, when all of a sudden, at some few paces behind him, he heard a crackling among the leaves. He turned and the first thing he could distinguish in the darkness was the glowing light in a pair of eyes which shone like live coals. Then, looking more closely, and forcing his eyes, so to speak, to penetrate the gloom, he saw that a great wolf was following him, step by step. But it was not the wolf that he had entertained in his hut; that was black, while this was a reddish-brown. There was no mistaking one for the other, either as to colour or size. As Thibault had no reason to suppose that all the wolves he came across would be animated with such benevolent feelings towards him as the first with which he had had dealings, he grasped his quarter-staff in both hands, and began twirling it about to make sure he had not forgotten the knack of using it. But to his great surprise the wolf went on trotting quietly behind him, without evincing any hostile intention, pausing when he paused, and going on again when he did, only now and then giving a howl as if to summon re-inforcements. Thibault was not altogether without uneasiness as regards these occasional howls, and presently he became aware of two other bright spots of light in front of him, shining at intervals through the darkness which was growing thicker and thicker. Holding his stick up in readiness to hit, he went forward towards these two lights, which remained station ary, and as he did so, his foot seemed to stumble against something lying across the path it was another wolf. Not pausing to reflect whether it might not be unwise now to attack the first wolf, Thibault brought down his staff, giving the fellow a violent blow on the head. The animal uttered a howl of pain, then shaking his ears like a dog that has been beaten by its master, began walking on in front of the shoemaker. Thibault then turned to see what had become of the first wolf: it was still following him, still keeping step with him. Bringing his eyes back again to the front, he now perceived that a third wolf was walking alongside to the right, and turning instinctively to the left, saw a fourth flanking him on that side too. Before he had gone a mile, a dozen of the animals had formed a circle round him. The situation was critical, and Thibault was fully conscious of its gravity. At first he tried to sing, hoping that the sound of the human voice might frighten away the animals; but the expedient was vain. Not a single animal swerved from its place in the circle, which was as exactly formed as if drawn with compasses. Then he thought he would climb up into the first thick-leaved tree he came to, and there wait for daylight; but on further deliberation, he decided that the wisest course was to try to get home, as the wolves, in spite of their number, still appeared as well intentioned as when there was only one. It would be time enough to climb up into a tree when they began to show signs of any change of behaviour towards him.

At the same time, we are bound to add that Thibault was so disquieted in mind and had reached his own door before he knew where he was that he did not at first recognize his own house. But a still greater surprise awaited him, for the wolves in front now respectfully drew back into two lines, sitting up on their hind legs and making a lane for him to pass through. Thibault did not waste time stopping to thank them for this act of courtesy but dashed into the house, banging the door shut behind him. Having firmly shut and bolted the door, he pushed the great chest against it to better resist any assault that might be made upon it. Then he flung himself into a chair and at last began to find himself able to breathe more freely.

As soon as he was somewhat recovered, he went and peeped through the little window that looked out on the forest. A row of gleaming eyes assured him that far from having retired, the wolves had arranged themselves symmetrically in file in front of his dwelling.

To anyone else the mere proximity of the animals would have been most alarming, but, Thibault who shortly before, had been obliged to walk escorted by this terrible troop, found comfort in the thought that a wall, however thin, now separated him from his formidable companions.

Thibault lit his little iron lamp and put it on the table; drew the scattered wood-ashes of his hearth together and threw on them a bundle of chips, and then made a good fire, hoping that the reflection of the blaze would frighten away the wolves. But Thibault’s wolves were evidently wolves of a special sort, accustomed to fire, for they did not budge an inch from the post they had taken up. The state of uneasiness he was in prevented Thibault from sleeping, and directly dawn broke, he was able to look out and count them. They seemed, just as on the night before, to be waiting, some seated, some lying down, others sleeping or walking up and down like sentinels. But at length, as the last star melted away, drowned in the waves of purple light ebbing up from the east, all the wolves with one accord rose, and uttering the mournful howl with which animals of darkness are wont to salute the day, they dispersed in various directions and disappeared. Thibault was now able to sit down and think over the misadventure of the previous day, and he began by asking himself how it was that the mistress of the Mill had not preferred him to his cousin Landry. Was he no longer the handsome Thibault, or had some disadvantageous change come over his personal appearance? There was only one way of ascertaining whether this was so or not, namely, by consulting his mirror. So he took down the fragment of looking-glass hanging over the chimney-piece, and carried it towards the light, smiling to himself the while like a vain woman. But he had hardly given the first glance at himself in the mirror, before he uttered a cry, half of astonishment, half of horror. True, he was still the handsome Thibault, but the one red hair, thanks to the hasty wishes which had so imprudently escaped him, had now grown to a regular lock of hair, of colour and brilliancy that vied with the brightest flames upon his hearth.

His forehead grew cold with sweat. Knowing, however, that all attempts to pluck it out or cut it off would be futile, he made up his mind to make the best of the matter as it stood, and in future to forbear as far as possible from framing any wishes. The best thing was to put out of his mind all the ambitious desires that had worked so fatally for him, and go back to his humble trade. So Thibault sat down and tried to work, but he had no heart for the job. In vain he tried to remember the carols he had been in the habit of singing in the happier days when the beech and the birch shaped themselves so quickly beneath his fingers; his tools lay untouched for hours together. He pondered over matters, asking himself whether it was not a miserable thing to be sweating one’s heart out merely for the privilege of leading a painful and wretched existence, when, by judiciously directing one’s wishes one might so easily attain to happiness. Formerly, even the preparation of his frugal meal had been an agreeable distraction, but it was so no longer; when hunger seized him and he was forced to eat his piece of black bread, he did it with a feeling of repugnance, and the envy, which had hitherto been nothing more than a vague aspiration after ease and comfort, was now developed into a blind and violent hatred towards his fellow creatures.

Still the day, long as it seemed to Thibault, passed away like all its fellows. When twilight fell, he went outside and sat down on the bench which he had made himself and placed in front of the door, and there he remained, lost in gloomy reflections. Scarcely had the shadows be gun to darken, before a wolf emerged from the underwood, and, as on the previous evening, went and lay down at a short distance from the house. As on the evening before, this wolf was followed by a second, by a third, in short by the whole pack, and once more they all took up their respective posts preparatory to the night’s watch. As soon as Thibault saw the third wolf appear, he went indoors and barricaded himself in as carefully as the evening before; but this evening he was even more unhappy and low spirited, and felt that he had not the strength to keep awake all night. So he lighted his fire, and piled it up in such a way that it would last till the morning, and throwing himself on his bed, fell fast asleep. When he awoke, it was broad daylight, the sun having risen some hours before. Its rays fell in many colours on the quivering autumn leaves, dyeing them with a thousand shades of gold and purple.

Thibault ran to the window, the wolves had disappeared, leaving behind only the mark of where their bodies had lain on the dew-covered grass.

Next evening they again congregated before his dwelling; but he was now growing gradually accustomed to their presence, and had come to the conclusion that his relations with the large black wolf had somehow awakened sympathetic feelings towards him in all other individuals of the same species, and he determined to find out, once for all, what their designs towards him really were. Accordingly, thrusting a freshly sharpened bill-hook into his belt, and taking his boar-spear in his hand, the shoemaker opened his door and walked resolutely out to face them. Having half expected that they would spring upon him, he was greatly surprised to see them begin to wag their tails like so many dogs on seeing their master approach. Their greetings were so
expressive of friendliness, that Thibault even ventured to stroke one or two of them on the back, which they not only allowed him to do, but actually gave signs of the greatest pleasure at being thus noticed.

“Oh! ho!” muttered Thibault, whose wandering imagination always went ahead at a gallop, “if these queer friends of mine are as obedient as they are gentle, why, here I am, the owner of a pack unequalled by any my Lord Baron has ever possessed, and I shall have no difficulty whatever now in dining on venison whenever the fancy so takes me.”

He had hardly said the words, when four of the strongest and most alert of the four-footed beasts separated themselves from the others and galloped off into the forest. A few minutes later a howl was heard, sounding from the depths of the underwood, and half an hour afterwards one of the wolves reappeared dragging with it a fine kid which left behind it a long trail of blood on the grass. The wolf laid the animal at Thibault’s feet, who delighted beyond measure at seeing his wishes, not only accomplished, but forestalled, broke up the kid, giving each of the wolves an equal share, and keeping the back and haunches for himself. Then with the gesture of an Emperor, which showed that he now at last understood the position he held, he ordered the wolves away until the morrow.

Early next morning, before the day broke, he went off to Villers-Cotterets, and at the price of a couple of crowns, the Innkeeper of the Boule-d’Or, took the two haunches off his hands.

The following day, it was half of a boar that Thibault conveyed to the Innkeeper, and it was not long before he became the latter’s chief purveyor.

Thibault, taking a taste for this sort of business, now passed his whole day hanging about the taverns, and gave no more thought to the making of shoes. One or two of his acquaintances began to make fun of his red lock, for however assiduously he covered it with the rest of his hair, it always found a way of getting through the curls that hid it, and making itself visible. But Thibault soon gave it plainly to be understood that he would take no joking about the unfortunate disfigurement.

Meanwhile, as ill luck would have it, the Duke of Orleans and Madame de Montesson came to spend a few days at Villers-Cotterets. This was a fresh incentive to Thibault’s madly ambitious spirit. All the fine and beautiful ladies and all the gay young lords from the neighbouring estates, the Montbretons, the Montesquious, the Courvals, hastened to Villers-Cotterets. The ladies brought their richest attire, the young lords their most elegant costumes. The Baron’s hunting-horn resounded through the forest louder and gayer than ever. Graceful amazons and dashing cavaliers, in red coats laced with gold, passed like radiant visions, as they were borne along on their magnificent English horses, illuminating the sombre depths of the wood like brilliant flashes of light.

In the evening it was different; then all this aristocratic company assembled for feasting and dancing, or at other times drove out in beautiful gilt carriages bedizened with coats of arms of every colour.

Thibault always took his stand in the front rank of the lookers-on, gazing with avidity on these clouds of satin and lace, which lifted now and then to disclose the delicate ankles encased in their fine silk stockings, and the little shoes with their red heels. Thus the whole cavalcade swept past in front of the astonished peasantry, leaving a faint exhalation of scent and powder and delicate perfumes. And then Thibault would ask himself why he was not one of those young lords in their embroidered coats; why he had not one of these beautiful women in their rustling satins for his mistress. Then his thoughts would turn to Agnelette and Madame Polet, and he saw them just as they were, the one a poor little peasant girl, the other nothing more than the owner of a rustic mill.

But it was when he was walking home at night through the forest, accompanied by his pack of wolves, which, from the moment the night fell and he set foot inside the forest, no more thought of leaving him than the King’s bodyguard would dream of leaving their Royal master, that his broodings took their most disastrous turn. Surrounded by the temptations which now assailed him, it was only what was to be expected that Thibault who had already gone so far in the direction of evil, should break away from what little good was still left in him, losing even the very remembrance of having once led an honest life. What were the few paltry crowns that the Land lord of the Boule-d’Or gave him in payment for the game which his good friends the wolves procured for him? Saved up for months, even for years, they would still be insufficient to satisfy a single one of the humblest of the desires which kept tormenting his brain. It would be scarcely safe to say that
Thibault, who had first wished for a haunch of the Baron’s buck, then for Agnelette’s heart, and then for the widow Polet’s mill, would now be satisfied even with the Castle at Oigny or Longpont, to such extravagant issues had his ambition been excited by those dainty feet, those trim ankles, those exquisite scents exhaled from all those velvet and satin gowns.

At last one day he said to himself definitely that it would be the veriest folly to go on living his poor life when a power so tremendous as he now possessed, was at his disposal. From that moment he made up his mind that, no matter if his hair should grow as red as the crown of fire which is seen at night hanging over the great chimney at the glass works of Saint Gobain, he would exercise this power of his to the accomplishing of the most high-flown of his ambitions.

…to be continued.

I’m in love with Leonor Fini

At the ground floor of Palazzo Reale, Milan pays long-overdue homage to one of the most complex, courageous, and captivating figures of twentieth-century art: Leonor Fini. For those who know her, this exhibition is a celebration. For those discovering her for the first time — and I’m from this latter category — I promise it will be a revelation.

I fell in love with Leonor Fini not only for her striking imagery and theatrical mastery, but because she remains, still today, a radically underappreciated voice in the canon of modern art. Overshadowed by the dominant narratives of Surrealism—largely male, often narrow—Fini carved out a space that was defiantly her own: that of a fierce and fantastically unbound feminism. Her universe is one of powerful women, hybrid beings, sensual ambiguity, and unapologetic self-possession. In this sense, the exhibition is not just a retrospective; it is a necessary act of recognition. In a world still negotiating the terms of gender, identity, and representation, Fini’s work speaks with startling prescience. Her rejection of binaries, her fluid approach to gender, her portrayal of women not as muses or victims but as queens, witches, and sphinxes—all these resonate today with renewed urgency. Long before “non-binary” entered the mainstream vocabulary, Fini had already imagined a world where identity is performance, costume, mask—and ultimately, freedom. Leonor Fini does not need to be reimagined for our times. Our times are finally catching up to her.

And it feels profoundly right that this exhibition is finally hosted in Italy, a country so deeply entwined with her life and career: born in Buenos Aires, raised in Trieste, and artistically formed in Paris, Fini is a truly transnational figure—her identity, much like her art, resists confinement. She did not belong to the Surrealists, although she exhibited with them. She did not conform to movements, lovers, or rules. She staged her life as an artwork, lived on her own terms, and painted with unmatched theatricality and depth.

As you walk through rooms filled with her visions—erotic, mythic, political, otherworldly—take the opportunity not only to appreciate her genius, but to question why it took us so long to look back. And let us ensure that this moment is not an isolated celebration, but the beginning of a broader rediscovery.

The Sphinx — The Other Self

At the heart of Leonor Fini’s mythology lies the Sphinx—not as a riddle to be solved, but as a key to understanding the very essence of her art and persona. This majestic, winged creature—hybrid, transformative, and magnetic—transcends time and tradition. Its symbolic origins in Fini’s universe echo a sculpture of pink porphyry, transported from Egypt and now resting at the Castello di Miramare in Trieste, a city intimately tied to Fini’s own formative years.

But Fini’s Sphinx is more than a relic or an echo. She reinvents it as a liminal figure, caught between binaries—woman and man, beast and human, the known and the unknowable. The Sphinx becomes a totem of a feminine consciousness that requires no declaration, no validation. It simply exists, radiating quiet dominion.

As guardian of inner truths and secret instincts, this figure calls forth a deep, ancestral memory—a lost feminine power, not diminished but hidden, threaded through the warp of civilization, nature, and myth. In Fini’s hands, the Sphinx is not a question but an answer: to who we are when we are free of roles, free of masks. A mirror of multiplicity. A symbol of the self unbound.

[image error]

Her orange-hued Sphinx is one of the four figures proposed as archetypical scenes—in the Jungian sense of the word—to understand Fini’s approach to reality. The other scenes are the theme of the sleeping youth—complemented by the astounding Divinité chatonienne guettant le sommeil d’un jeune homme—the mask or the disguise as a survival tool, and blindness—with reference to an episode of her youth in which she had to stay blindfolded in the dark for two months due to an infection.

They serve as an introduction, or a prelude, to the rest of the exhibition.

In 1931, Leonor Fini moved to Paris—an act that would redefine her creative path. She left behind a naturalistic style to embrace one that was more experimental and deeply personal. Works like Maternité and her portrait series of André Pieyre de Mandiargues became early testaments to her fascination with defiance and transformation. In portraying Mandiargues in unconventional, often gender-fluid roles, Fini directly challenged traditional norms, both artistic and social. She revisited the Old Masters not to replicate but to subvert, drawing on their techniques to create radical new visions—such as Portrait of André Pieyre de Mandiargues in a Leopard Collar, where elegance masks rebellion and—if you don’t mind me saying—sheer queerness.

[image error] Portrait of André Pieyre de Mandiargues in a Leopard Collar

Paris brought her into the orbit of the Surrealists, whose intensity and ideas resonated with her own but whom she never fully joined. Fini approached them with curiosity and distance, intrigued yet unwilling to submit to their dogmas. She recognized their shared reverence for the visionary—echoes of Bosch, de Chirico, and Piero di Cosimo—but followed her own instincts. From 1935 onward, she began integrating unmistakably surrealist elements into her work, blending the eerie with the wondrous. Self-Portrait with Charlie Holt, for instance, conjures a theatrical intimacy wrapped in dreamlike menace.

Self-Portrait with Charlie Holt

Surrealism opened doors, especially to other women artists—Meret Oppenheim, the great Leonora Carrington, Dora Maar, Lee Miller, Frida Kahlo, Dorothea Tanning, Alice Rahon—and these connections deepened Fini’s exploration of female autonomy and inner power. Works like Self-Portrait with an Owl evoke an ancient femininity: the artist aligning herself with Athena, goddess of wisdom and strategy.

Despite her ambivalence toward the surrealist label, Fini participated in key moments of the movement, including the International Surrealist Exhibition in London (1936), where she unveiled L’Arme blanche—a haunting depiction of desire and danger, love and rage, all through a female lens. Fini’s vision of gender and sexuality was radically ahead of her time. Her art spoke of bisexuality and queerness, making the Surrealists uncomfortable. Yet she remained close to some of its great names—Max Ernst, Victor Brauner—who, in turn, influenced her lifelong inquiry into magic, alchemy, and the arcane.

Second World War: body, death, and beauty

To understand how the surrounding atmosphere influenced Leonor Fini, take for instance a key work from this period, Le Bout du monde (The Edge of the World), in which the artist envisions herself as the sole survivor in an apocalyptic landscape, a sovereign figure amidst a world of living skulls sprouting bulbs—surreal remnants of a once-living earth.

These post-catastrophic visions mark a striking shift in her work. In paintings like L’Ombrelle (The Parasol), Fini transforms delicate objects of elegance into brittle, crystalline ruins, alluding to fragility beneath sophistication. Her preoccupation with death and transformation was catalyzed by a stay on the island of Giglio with Stanislao Lepri, where she collected bones and organic matter along the shore, turning them into mysterious hybrid beings—like Sphinx Regina, La Racine aux coquilles d’oeufs (The Root with Eggshells), Visage, and La Grande Racine (The Great Root).

These works, rendered with exquisite technique, echo the baroque tradition of vanitas and are laden with autobiographical symbols—like the hollow egg in L’Escalier dans la tour (The Staircase in the Tower), a haunting emblem of emptiness and memory.

Fini’s thought was deeply influenced by Georges Bataille and Mario Praz, whose writings on eroticism, death, and the diabolical became touchstones. She illustrated key texts such as Bataille’s Tears of Eros and Praz’s The Flesh, Death and the Devil in Romantic Literature, echoing their dark fascination with the body and its limits. Among the most emblematic works of this era is Méphisto (Ange-Diable) (Mephisto [Angel-Devil])—a figure suspended between sacred and profane, embodying Fini’s vision of the divine and demonic in perpetual dialogue.

These images are neither solely morbid nor merely symbolic. They express a deeply sensual and poetic confrontation with mortality, culminating in works like Qui est-ce? (Who Is It?), a ghostly meditation on loss and the unknowable. For Fini, death is never just an end—it is a space of ritual, ambiguity, and dark allure, and she navigates it with both lucid sorrow and baroque intensity.

Fini and her Men

Leonor Fini’s art is a mirror of her life—a life defiantly lived beyond the borders of patriarchy. She explored and embodied alternative models of family, love, and sexuality, not as mere provocations but as deep personal convictions. Raised without a father and surrounded by free-thinking spirits, Fini rejected the normative ideals of motherhood and monogamy. Instead, she cultivated non-conventional, often non-monogamous and fluid relationships, including long-standing bonds with bisexual men.

These choices were never hidden; they defined both her public image and her artistic language. Among her most intimate and influential companions were André Pieyre de Mandiargues, Stanislao Lepri, and Constantin Jelenski, whose presence permeates works like Autoportrait avec Kot et Sergio—a dreamlike composition where male torsos float in an indeterminate emotional space.

On a side note, I love the setting for this section of the exhibition, with red walls and a thin string courtain.

In Fini’s work, the bedroom becomes a symbolic stage, a site of intimacy and ritualised performance. This is vividly expressed in pieces like Dans la tour (Self-portrait with Constantin Jelenski) and L’Alcôve (Self-portrait with Nico Papatakis), where the bed is more than a physical refuge—it becomes an emblem of ambiguity, identity, and play. She recalled that sleeping beside her mother in childhood were among her happiest memories, and this intimacy without a paternal figure haunted and nourished her imagination.

Her exploration of erotic space often extended beyond the private, reaching into semi-public realms, conjuring visions of harems and theatrical enclosures—liminal spaces that blurred the lines between desire, privacy, and performance.

Works such as Les Carcans (The Shackles) and Rasch, Rasch, Rasch, meine Puppen Warten! (Hurry, hurry, hurry, my dolls are waiting!) reflect this tension between public provocation and private liberation. In these, Fini celebrates a fluid, transgressive sexuality—one that challenges the binary gaze and anticipates the language of freedom and identity that only much later would be fully embraced.

In The Shackles, the only free woman is the naked one, freely displaying her body.Queer as Folk: Androgyny and the Reimagined Narcissus

Leonor Fini had no time for convention—especially not the artistic kind that told her what was proper to paint, how to paint it, and who was allowed to desire whom. One of her most subtly radical moves was reclaiming the male body as an object of female (and queer) desire.

For centuries, art history has ogled the female nude from a male perspective. Fini flipped the canvas. Her gaze, unmistakably her own, lingers on the delicate, androgynous beauty of men, recasting them not as heroes or predators, but as enigmatic muses, often languid, sensual. Her references reached back to the elegance of Mannerism and the drama of the Renaissance, but her message was totally modern: bodies—and desire—don’t obey binaries.

L’Homme aux chouettes

In works like Femme assise sur un homme nu (Woman Sitting on a Naked Man) or Portrait de Nico Papatakis (Portrait of Nico Papatakis, Nude), we encounter something tender and bold: a queering of the male form, infused with a quiet eroticism that resists dominance and embraces ambiguity. Elsewhere, in L’Homme aux chouettes (The Man with the Owls), wisdom and desire twist around each other as a man is stalked by a sexualized sphinx—half beast, half oracle, fully symbolic.

Femme assise sur un homme nu

Fini wasn’t theorising; she was living these questions. Her personal life was fluid, unconventional, and joyfully nonconforming. Her biographer Peter Webb suggests she was inspired by Freud’s idea of innate bisexuality, the belief that desire in its purest form is unbounded, organic, and indifferent to gender. This resonates not only in her canvases but also in the playful and intimate photographs taken during long summers in Tor San Lorenzo and Nonza, where her entourage of muses, friends, and lovers enacted a kind of liberated utopia.

All this culminates in the aptly titled Narcisse incomparable—not the Greek youth punished for vanity, but a kind of spiritual twin, an ideal synthesis of myth and memoir, masculine and feminine, reality and dream. It’s not about falling in love with one’s reflection, but about discovering a self that refuses to be pinned down, a body that belongs to no one and yet beckons everyone.

In Fini’s hands, Narcissus is not a warning. He’s an invitation—to look again, to desire differently, and to imagine new ways of seeing, being, and loving.

Beyond the Sphinx: the Archetypes of Female Power

Leonor Fini’s world is a matriarchal cosmos—not a fantasy, but a radical reimagining of history, myth, and identity. Her canvases are ruled by women, not as ornaments or muses, but as sovereigns, warriors, seers, and shape-shifters. Like many women artists of her generation, Fini sought to forge her identity in a male-dominated art world by creating her own mythology—a pantheon of female strength.

As art critic Gloria Orenstein notes, these were women claiming what she calls the Female Archetype, reclaiming not the infantilised “femme-enfant” so popular among the Surrealists, but figures of mature, self-possessed authority. Drawing on Jungian archetypes, Fini painted sphinxes, chimaeras, witches, and alchemists—not as fantasy creatures but as symbolic strategies. Through them, she encoded a femininity that defied patriarchal norms, honouring an age—half dreamed, half remembered—when women freely expressed their spiritual, psychic, and erotic power.

In L’Alcôve, Leonora Carrington appears not as a friend but as a kindred warrior—a modern-day Joan of Arc, timeless and fearless. Fini’s warrior women, such as in Femme en armure II (Woman in Armor II), wore corsets merged with masculine armor—at once protection and provocation. These hybrids suggested not submission but androgynous strength, agency, and defiance. Her universe was filled with sorceresses, goddesses, faeries, and destroyers, archetypes of transformation, often bathed in shadow yet glowing from within.

Nowhere is this duality clearer than in her second take on Le Bout du monde (The Edge of the World), a haunting apocalyptic vision in which the last figure standing is not a broken remnant of civilisation, but a luminous, almost blindingly white woman. Perhaps, Fini suggests, in the rubble of the postwar world, it would be women—resolute, mythical, reborn—who would shape the future.

 

Theatre and Cinema: Between Public Spectacle and Private Ritual

To speak of Leonor Fini is to speak of the theatre—not just as a venue, but as a worldview. Her art is steeped in the theatrical, blurring the boundaries between high culture and popular fantasy, grandeur and intimacy. Each painting feels like a private stage, a scene set not in a grand hall but in a velvet-draped room, where the performance is for one pair of eyes alone.

Her lifelong passion for costume and scenography became not just a motif, but a career within a career. Fini designed for opera, ballet, cinema, and stage, collaborating with some of the most prestigious houses in Europe. Whether dressing Maria Callas at La Scala in Il ritorno del serraglio or designing for Wagner’s Tannhäuser at the Palais Garnier in Paris, she brought her vision to life in silk, bone, and velvet.

Fini obviously wasn’t just sketching dresses. Her work shows an architect’s grasp of space, a sculptor’s feel for texture, and a symbolist’s love of meaning. She envisioned costumes for Roland Petit’s Les Demoiselles de la nuit and (even if unofficially) contributed to Fellini’s 8½, And she understood how to build a world—not just for the audience, but for the body within it.

This section of the exhibition collects her sketches and designs, but also her obsession with materials: furniture, fabrics, jewelry, even corsets-as-thrones. She brought the Renaissance into dialogue with the Surreal, envisioning chairs shaped like armored torsos, cabinets that looked like sacred relics, and corsets made from ebony and mother-of-pearl. Among her most iconic design works is the bottle for Elsa Schiaparelli’s Shocking perfume—a curvaceous torso of pink glass that could have walked straight out of one of Fini’s paintings. Elsewhere, she curated groundbreaking shows, like Leo Castelli’s first exhibition in Paris, blurring the lines between curation and creation.

And through it all, Leonor Fini was never merely behind the scenes. She dressed like her paintings—corseted, crowned, and radiant, slipping between persona and person like quicksilver. In her world, life itself was a performance, staged in satins and shadows, embroidered in mystery, and always in motion.

Persona: the Ultimate Mask

The last section of the exhibition is left for the most intimate territory of all: the construction of the self—not just the artist, but the persona, the myth, the mask she chose to wear. This final section reveals how Fini consciously crafted her public image through photography and self-fashioning, walking the razor’s edge between self-representation and self-invention. More than narcissism, the endless variations of her image show a lucid awareness of the power of appearance, and of how identity, especially for a woman in the 20th century, could be reclaimed not through confession but through performance.

In a 1950 letter, writer Jean Genet urged Fini to shed her theatricality, to “stop disappearing” and simply “appear.” But Genet missed the point. For Fini, constructing a mask wasn’t to hide—it was to reveal something more profound, poetic and chosen. Her myth was her truth.

Fini’s commitment to the art of persona extended to her elaborate costumes and masks, both in life and on stage. She was a fixture in the night world of postwar Paris, not because she partied, but because she transformed every entrance into a scene, a spell, a declaration.

“I have always loved dressing up,” she confessed. “Not for the ball, not to dance, but just to arrive. To intoxicate myself with myself for a moment.” Her costumes—lavish, theatrical, impossible to ignore—were made to make you pause, to draw breath, to witness. “If they made people step back just to see me pass,” she said, “then yes, that fulfilled me completely.”

And the show leaves us not with a fixed image, but with a thousand reflections—Leonor Fini as sphinx, as sorceress, as lover, as myth. Not a single truth, but a shimmering constellation of selves. Because for Fini, identity was never something to be defined. It was always something to be performed—deliberately, defiantly, and magnificently.

Please don’t tell me I should mourn

The Pope is dead, and they will tell you he was a groundbreaking innovator when it comes to championing the LGBTQ+ community and to supporting the rights of women. The bar was set and still is set so low that you might be fooled into thinking this is true. So here’s a few reminders and two follow-up reads, should you need documentation on how the Catholic church is a dangerous institution we’re letting way too close to young people in vulnerable situations.

Dignitas Infinita, a doctrinal document from 2024, equates gender-affirming surgery to violations of human dignity comparable to abortion and euthanasia. The idea was pushed again in April, arguing that “gender ideology” “nullifies differences” and contradicts God’s plan, whatever that is.

The Strength of a Vocation is a text from 2018 in which it’s stated that individuals with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” should not be admitted to seminaries or religious life, emphasizing celibacy and insinuating that queer people are prone to act as predators in these contexts, living a “double life”.

Even the 2023 blessings for same-sex couples was given provided they avoid resembling marriage rites. While saying that being gay is not a sin (well thank you, darling) he both stressed that homosexual acts are sinful under Catholic teaching, as all sexual acts outside marriage, and that homosexual couples can’t marry, basically saying they can be a couple if they stay celibate. Which is not how being a couple works. Being a couple should work in the way THE COUPLE decides.

On a side note, it didn’t go any better for women. After receiving criticism of his language about women’s “feminine genius,” he argued against “masculinizing” women through “exaggerated feminism”. He kept praising women’s “tenderness and compassion”, pitting pressure on it as essential for resolving global conflicts and framing women’s contributions in ways that are always supportive and never leading.

Progresses on bodily autonomy and abortion? Forget about it. It’s from March 2024 the statement about institutional duty to help women “accept the gift of life.”

So yeah. I respect people who are mourning their religious leader. But do not come around spitting bullshit on how he tried to help me too.

A Photo Journey to the Ends of the Earth

At the ground floor of Museo Diocesano, downstairs from Tintoretto’s Deposition, photographer Alessandro Grassani takes us on a visual journey titled Emergenza Climatica – Un viaggio ai confini del mondo.

He dives into the harsh reality of climate migration—an effect of global warming that’s already pushing people out of their homes. His project spans four countries (Mongolia, Bangladesh, Kenya, and Haiti), each struggling with environmental extremes, from floods to droughts. Through his lens, we see people forced to leave their roots and move into sprawling, often chaotic cities, only to be met by a whole new set of challenges where urban migration means shantytowns and marginalized slums.

Grassani captures it all with a heart full of empathy, and yet without any rhetoric. His photos hit you with a double whammy: stunning visuals and a gut-punch of meaning. On one side, you’ve got nature in all its fierce, untamable glory. On the other, you see how these very landscapes, once idyllic, are turning into existential trap zones for the people who live there.

According to the experts, by 2050 we might see a jaw-dropping 216 million people become climate migrants. Not crossing borders borders, but moving within their own countries, trying to stay one step ahead of floods, droughts, and other not-so-natural disasters. And most of them are in countries that contributed the least to climate change.

People are fleeing the countryside and flooding cities in search of a better life, only to end up in overcrowded slums with more problems than solutions. Since 2008, urban population has officially outnumbered rural for the first time in history—and it’s not slowing down. Projections suggest another 2.5 billion people will make the move by 2050, mostly in Asia and Africa.

Tintoretto’s Deposition (and 4 artists around it)

The Museo Diocesano in Milan sets up one of these exhibitions each year around Christmas and Easter: they feature a singular work from a major artist, and dive deep into the understanding of this work, often pairing it with the interpretation of contemporary artists. Last year, I talked about Beato Angelico‘s Childhood of Christ, and Bellini‘s Lamentation was the work featured last Easter. This year is the turn of Tintoretto‘s masterpiece Christ’s Deposition, a work from the Venetian Renaissance on loan from the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice.

Originally created around 1562 for the Church of Santa Maria dell’Umiltà alle Zattere, the painting is renowned for its dramatic composition, dynamic use of light and shadow, and emotional depth, with the body of Christ being carried on one side and the Virgin Mary fainting with grief on the other side.

In a contemporary dialogue with Tintoretto’s work, four modern artists—Jacopo Benassi, Luca Bertolo, Alberto Gianfreda, and Maria Elisabetta Novello—offer their interpretations through various media, including installation and painting. This initiative, in collaboration with Casa Testori, invites visitors to explore the interplay between historical and modern artistic expressions.​

Luca Bertolo

​Luca Bertolo, born in 1968 in Milan, is a painter recognised for his conceptual and experimental approach. Initially trained in computer science at the University of Milan, he later pursued painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, graduating in 1998. His career has included residencies in São Paulo, London, Berlin, and Vienna, and he currently resides and works in Seravezza, Tuscany.​

Bertolo’s artistic practice is characterised by a deep engagement with the medium of painting itself. He often explores the tension between abstraction and figuration, which I always enjoy. He frequently employs the motif of the stain as a fundamental element, using it to both obscure and reveal forms within his compositions.​

His contribution at the Museo Diocesano, Veronica #1 (2024), is an oil and acrylic painting on sewn canvases that engages with the themes of suffering and redemption present in Tintoretto’s masterpiece and refers to the figure of Saint Veronica, the woman who – as the story goes – dried Christ’s face from sweat and blood with a cloth during his climb to Golgotha and his face miraculously stayed imprinted in the canvas. The actual relic is called the Veil of Veronica (Sudarium Veronicae), still venerated though being scientifically proven as a fake.

If you’re not easily impressed by religion and mysticism (and after 15 years with the nuns, I can say I am not), the show’s kick off is a bold choice: this piece is all about what’s not there. In Luca Bertolo’s take on the famous “Veil of Veronica,” the veil shows no face at all. Light, creamy canvas. But not empty at all: this “total canvas” hits you with a sense of something missing, something waiting to be revealed. It’s deep, it’s textured, it’s got layers (literally and metaphorically).

Bertolo’s approach is never loud, but deeply thoughtful. He crafted his “Veronica” on a patchwork of discarded canvas scraps—bits and pieces from failed paintings, repurposed. The result is a beautiful Frankenstein of painterly effort, stitching together the story of hard work, failed ideas, and the daily grind of art-making. The veil painted on top of it becomes a metaphor, not just for the divine, but for the artist’s own journey: messy, stitched-together, unresolved, but deeply personal. It’s like if your emotional baggage became a painting—and somehow, it’s stunning.

Because honestly, what better way to talk about Passover than through something that wears its scars proudly?

Jacopo Benassi

Jacopo Benassi, born in 1970 in La Spezia, is a photographer and multidisciplinary artist who, as far as I understand it, emerged from the underground music scene in the 1980s, His distinctive style in photography is characterized by the use of direct flash and the deliberate elimination of depth of field, resulting in stark, unfiltered photographs that confront the viewer with their immediacy, but his work spans various media, including performance, painting, and installation. His subjects range from portraits of artists and designers to explorations of the human body and self-portraiture. He has exhibited internationally at institutions such as the Tate Modern in London and the Palais de Tokyo in Paris​.

Flashback to 1988: 18-year-old Jacopo Benassi, full of artistic drive, paints a copy of Caravaggio’s Entombment of Christ. His mother Giusy loves it and claims it for her bedroom wall. And there it stayed—faithfully hanging there from 1989 all the way until 2022, when she passed away.

That moment sparked something deep for the artist. When he took the painting down, he noticed it had left a mark on the wall—like a quiet ghost of the artwork, still lingering. It was as if Giusy had never let it go. That trace became the first thing he photographed, a tender nod to his mother’s connection with the piece and his own journey from painter to photographer over three decades.

Benassi didn’t stop there. He added another photo: a raw, honest image of a table piled with the telltale signs of his mom’s daily life—her ashtray, her cigarettes. Then he framed both the painting and the photos together, strapping them into one powerful mixed-media bundle. The result? A deeply personal narrative that’s half memorial, half love letter.

And here’s a cool twist: the only part of the original Caravaggio visible is Christ’s arm—falling, lifeless. It mirrors the drama of Tintoretto’s Descent from the Cross, tying art history into this very human story. Oh, and that year painted on the wall? 1943. His mother’s birthyear.

To round it all off, Benassi added a final touch: a sculptural lamp he built himself. It’s part light, part art, part work-in-progress pause button—crafted from modeling clay and turned off as if taking a coffee break from the creative grind. That lamp doesn’t just illuminate the piece; it sheds light on the artist’s own emotional construction site, where art and memory are still very much under renovation.

Alberto Gianfreda

​Alberto Gianfreda (b. 1981, Desio) is a sculptor renowned for his exploration of themes such as resilience, identity, and the transformative power of matter. Educated at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan, where he currently teaches sculpture techniques, Gianfreda further specialised in Sacred Art and Anthropology and completed his training at the TAM centre under the direction of Nunzio Di Stefano.​

His contribution at the Museo Diocesano is called Materia comune (2025), and it’s a stunning installation composed of white ceramic plates, an aluminium chain, and stools shaped in the general form of Christ’s body as he’s being deposed from the Cross, reflecting on fragmentation, reconstruction, and the interplay between memory and material. Gianfreda’s approach emphasises the instability of form and the process of reassembling broken elements; through his use of everyday materials and modular assemblages, he invites to contemplate the transient nature of form and the mystery of a seemingly impossible rebirth. Though I’m not religious, I’ve rarely seen a depiction of the resurrection that’s more on point.

Maria Elisabetta Novello

Maria Elisabetta Novello (born 1974, Vicenza) works on similar themes, as her practice in visual arts often centres on ephemeral materials—primarily ash and dust—as metaphors for memory, impermanence, and the fragility of existence. A graduate of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia, she has developed a poetic language that intertwines personal and collective histories through subtle, minimal gestures and works in the form of installations and landscapes, where the material itself becomes a vessel for transformation and reflection.​

I had the chance of viewing her work in association with an installation by Jannis Kounellis, a work where heavy and yet delicate glass blocks were balancing on steel scales.

Her contribution in this exhibition is a little more didascalic, with ash and dust, quoting the final, haunting verse of Il canto delle crisalidi, a poem by Carlo Michelstaedter, a brilliant young thinker from Gorizia who passed away way too soon, at just 23. He wrote about what he called the “tragedy of finiteness”—and that theme struck a chord with the artist. Friuli, Michelstaedter’s homeland, feels like a second home to her. She’s carried that emotional thread into her work, finding in Tintoretto’s paintings the same powerful tension between life and death that Michelstaedter wrote about. This isn’t just about death, though—it’s about the tender, inevitable truth that everything is finite, fleeting, and therefore, incredibly precious.

#WerewolvesWednesday: The Wolf-Leader (8)

A werewolf story by Alexandre Dumas père.

Chapter VIII: Thibault’s Wishes

The widow, on perceiving the effect which the sight of the soldiers advancing towards the mill had upon Landry, was almost as frightened as the lad himself.

“Ah, dear God!” she cried, “what is the matter, my poor Landry?”

“Say, what is the matter?” asked Thibault in his turn.

“Alas!” replied Landry, “last Thursday, in a moment of despair, meeting the recruiting-sergeant at the Dauphin Inn, I enlisted,”

“In a moment of despair!” exclaimed the mistress of the mill, “and why were you in despair?”

“I was in despair,” said Landry, with a mighty effort, “I was in despair because I love you.”

“And it is because you loved me, unhappy boy! that you enlisted?”

“Did you not say that you would turn me away from the mill?”

“And have I turned you away?” asked Madame Polet, with an expression which it was impossible to misinterpret.

“Ah! God! then you would not really have sent me away?” asked Landry.

“Poor boy!” said the mistress of the mill, with a smile and a pitying movement of the shoulders, which, at any other time, would have made Landry almost die of joy, but, as it was, only doubled his distress.

“Perhaps even now I might have time to hide,” he said.

“Hide!” said Thibault, “that will be of no use, I can tell you.”

“And why not?” said Madame Polet, “I am going to try, anyhow. Come, dear Landry.”

And she led the young man away, with every mark of the most loving sympathy.

Thibault followed them with his eyes: “It’s going badly for you, Thibault, my friend,” he said; “fortunately, let her hide him as cleverly as she may, they have a good scent, and will find him out.”

In saying this, Thibault was unconscious that he was giving utterance to a fresh wish.

The widow had evidently not hidden Landry very far away, for she returned after only a few seconds of absence; the hiding place was probably all the safer for being near. She had scarcely had time to catch her breath when the recruiting sergeant and his companions appeared at the door. Two remained outside, no doubt to catch Landry if he attempted to escape, while the sergeant and the other soldier walked in with the confidence of men who were conscious of acting under authority. The sergeant cast a searching glance around the room, brought his right foot back into the third position, and lifted his hand to the peak of his cap. The mistress of the mill did not wait for the sergeant to address her but, with one of her most fascinating smiles, asked him if he would like some refreshment—an offer which no recruiting sergeant is ever known to refuse. Then, thinking it a favourable moment to put the question, she asked them while they were drinking their wine, what had brought them to Croyolles Mill. The Sergeant replied that he had come in search of a lad, belonging to the Mill, who, after drinking with him to his Majesty’s health and signed his engagement, had not re-appeared. The lad in question, interrogated as to his name and dwelling-place, had declared himself to be one Landry, living with Madame Polet, a widow, owner of the Mill at Croyolles. On the strength of this declaration, he had now come to Madame Polet, widow, of Croyolles Mill, to reclaim the defaulter.

The widow, quite convinced that it was permissible to lie for a good cause, assured the Sergeant that she knew nothing of Landry, nor had any one of that name ever been at the Mill.

The Sergeant in reply said that Madame had the finest eyes and the most charming mouth in the world, but that was no reason why he should implicitly believe the glances of the one or the words of the other. He was bound, therefore, he continued, “to ask the fair widow to allow him to search the Mill.”

The search began, and about five minutes later, the sergeant returned to the room and asked Madame Polet for the key to her room. The widow appeared very surprised and shocked by such a request, but the sergeant was so persistent and determined that she was eventually forced to give up the key. A minute or two later, the sergeant walked in again, dragging Landry by the collar of his coat. When the widow saw them both enter, she turned deadly pale. As for Thibault, his heart beat so violently that he thought it would burst, for without the black wolf’s assistance, he was sure the sergeant would never have gone to look for Landry where he had found him.

“Ah! ah! my good fellow!” cried the Sergeant in a mocking voice, “so we prefer the service of beauty to the King’s service? That is easy to understand; but when one has the good fortune to be born in his Majesty’s domains and to have drunk his health, one has to give him a share of service, when his turn comes. So you must come along with us, my fine fellow, and after a few years in the King’s uniform, you can come back and serve under your old flag. So, now then, march!”

“But,” cried the widow, “Landry is not yet twenty, and you have not the right to take him under twenty.”

“She is right,” added Landry, “I am not twenty yet.”

“And when will you be twenty?”

“Not until to-morrow.”

“Good,” said the Sergeant, “we will put you tonight on a bed of straw, like a medlar, and by to-morrow, at daybreak when we wake you up, you will be ripe.”

Landry wept. The widow prayed, pleaded, implored, allowed herself to be kissed by the soldiers, patiently endured the coarse pleasantry excited by her sorrow, and at last offered a hundred crowns to buy him off. But all was of no avail. Landry’s wrists were bound, and then one of the soldiers taking hold of the end of the cord, the party started off, but not before the lad of the mill had found time to assure his dear mistress, that far or near, he would always love her, and that, if he died, her name would be the last upon his lips. The beautiful widow, on her side, had lost all thought of the world’s opinion in face of this great catastrophe, and before he was led away, she clasped Landry to her heart in a tender embrace.

When the little party disappeared behind the willows and she lost sight of them, the widow’s distress became so overpowering that she fainted and had to be carried to her bed. Thibault lavished the most devoted attention upon her. He was somewhat taken aback by the strong affection the widow evinced for his cousin; however, as this only made him applaud himself all the more for having cut the root of the evil, he still cherished the most sanguine hopes.

On coming to herself, the first name the widow uttered was that of Landry, to which Thibault replied with a hypocritical gesture of commiseration. Then the mistress of the mill began to sob. “Poor lad!” she cried, while hot tears flowed down her cheeks. “What will become of him, so weak and delicate as he is? The mere weight of his gun and knapsack will kill him!”

Then turning to her guest, she continued:

“Ah! Monsieur Thibault, this is a terrible trouble to me, for you no doubt have perceived that I love him? He was gentle, he was kind, he had no faults; he was not a gambler, nor a drinker; he would never have opposed my wishes, would never have tyrannised over his wife, and that would have seemed very sweet to me after the two cruel years that I lived with the late M. Polet. Ah! Monsieur Thibault, Monsieur Thibault! It is a sad grief indeed for a poor miserable woman to see all her anticipations of future happiness and peace thus suddenly swallowed up!”

Thibault thought this would be a good moment to declare himself; whenever he saw a woman crying, he immediately thought, most erroneously, that she only cried because she wished to be consoled. He decided, however, that he would not be able to attain his object without a certain circumlocution.

“Indeed,” he answered, “I quite understand your sorrow, nay, more than that, I share it with you, for you cannot doubt the affection I bear my cousin. But we must resign ourselves, and without wishing to deny Landry’s good qualities, I would still ask you, Madame, to find someone else who is his equal.”

“His equal!” exclaimed the widow. “There is no such person. Where shall I find so nice and so good a youth? It was a pleasure to me to look at his smooth young face, and with it all, he was so self-composed, so steady in his habits! He was working night and day, and yet, with a glance, I could make him shrink away and hide. No, no, Monsieur Thibault, I tell you frankly, the remembrance of him will prevent me from ever wishing to look at another man, and I know that I must resign myself to remaining a widow for the rest of my life.”

“Phew!” said Thibault; “but Landry was very young!”

“There is no disadvantage in that,” replied the widow.

“But who knows if he would always have retained his good qualities. Take my advice, Madame, do not grieve anymore, but, as I say, look out for some one who will make you forget him. What you really need is not a baby-face like that, but a grown man, possessing all the qualities that you admire and regret in Landry, but, at the same time sufficiently mature to prevent the chance of finding one fine day that all your illusions are dispersed, and that you are left face to face with a libertine and a bully.”

The mistress of the Mill shook her her head; but Thibault went on;

“In short, what you need, is a man who while earning your respect, will, at the same time make the Mill work profitably. You have but to say the word, and you would not have to wait long before you found yourself well provided for, my fair Madame, a good bit better than you were just now.”

“And where am I to find this miracle of a man?” asked the widow, as she rose to her feet, looking defiantly at the shoe-maker, as if throwing down a challenge. The latter, mistaking the tone in which these last words were said, thought it an excellent occasion to make known his own proposals, and accordingly hastened to profit by it.

“Well, I confess,” he answered, “that when I said a handsome widow like you would not have to go far before finding the man who would be just the very husband for her, I was thinking of myself, for I should reckon myself fortunate and feel proud to call myself your husband. Ah! I assure you,” he went on, while the mistress of the mill stood looking at him with ever-increasing displeasure in her eyes, “I assure you that with me you would have no occasion to fear any opposition to your wishes. I am a perfect lamb in the way of gentleness, and I should have but one law and one desire—my law would be to obey you, my desire to please you! And as to your fortune, I have means of adding to it which I will make known to you later on…”

But the end of Thibault’s sentence remained unspoken.

“What!” cried the widow, whose fury was the greater for having been kept in check until then, “What! you, whom I thought my friend, you dare to speak of replacing him in my heart! you try to dissuade me from keeping my faith to your cousin. Get out of the place, you worthless scoundrel! out of the place, I say! or I will not answer for the consequences; I have a good mind to get four of my men to collar you and throw you under the Mill-wheel.”

Thibault was anxious to make some sort of response, but, although ready with an answer on ordinary occasions, he could not for the moment think of a single word whereby to justify himself. True, Madame Polet, gave him no time to think, but seizing hold of a beautiful new jug that stood near her, she flung it at Thibault’s head. Luckily for him, Thibault dodged to the left and escaped the missile, which flew past him, crashing to pieces against the chimney-piece. Then the mistress of the house took up a stool, and aimed it at him with equal violence; this time Thibault dodged to the right, and the stool went against the window, smashing two or three panes of glass. At the sound of the falling glass, all the youths and maids of the Mill came running up. They found their mistress flinging bottler, water-jugs, salt-cellars, plates, everything in short that came to hand, with all her might at Thibault’s head. Fortunately for him widow Polet was too much incensed to be able to speak; if she had been able to do so, she would have called out; “Kill him! Strangle him! Kill the rascal! the scoundrel! the villain!”

On seeing the reinforcements arriving to help the widow, Thibault endeavoured to escape by the door that had been left open by the recruiting party, but just as he was running out, the good pig, that we saw taking its siesta in the sun, being roused out of its first sleep by all this hullabaloo, and thinking the farm people were after it, made a dash for its stye, and in so doing charged right against Thibault’s legs. The latter lost his balance, and went rolling over and over for a good ten paces in the dirt and slush. “Devil take you, you beast!” cried the shoe-maker, bruised by his fall, but even more furious at seeing his new clothes covered with mud. The wish was hardly out of his mouth, when the pig was suddenly taken with a fit of frenzy, and began rushing about the farm-yard like a mad animal, breaking, shattering, and turning over everything that came in its way. The farm hands, who had run to their mistress on hearing her cries, thought the pig’s behaviour was the cause of them and started off in pursuit of the animal. But it eluded all their attempts to seize hold of it, knocking over boys and girls, as it had knocked Thibault over, until, at last, coming to where the mill was separated from the sluice by a wooden partition, it crashed through the latter as easily as if it were made of paper, threw itself under the mill wheel … and disappeared as if sucked down by a whirlpool. The mistress of the mill had by this time recovered her speech. “Lay hold of Thibault!” she cried, for she had heard Thibault’s curse, and had been amazed and horrified at the instantaneous way in which it had worked. “Lay hold of him! knock him down! he is a wizard, a sorcerer! a were wolf!” applying to Thibault with this last word, one of the most terrible epithets that can be given to a man in our forest lands. Thibault, who scarcely knew where he was, seeing the momentary stupefaction which took possession of the farm people on hearing their mistress’s final invective, made use of the opportunity to dash past them, and while one went to get a pitch-fork and another a spade, he darted through the farm-yard gate, and began running up an almost perpendicular hill-side at full speed, with an ease which only confirmed Madame Polet’s suspicions, for the hill had always hitherto been looked upon as absolutely inaccessible, at any rate by the way Thibault had chosen to climb it.

“What!” she cried, “what! you give in like that! you should make after him, and seize hold of him, and knock him down!” But the farm servants shook their heads.

“Ah! Madame!” they said, “what is the use, what can we do against a were wolf?”

…to be continued

MDW2025 – Day 7

If you want to do something different and you like discovering lesser-known places, you can’t miss the Hundredicrafts exhibition called Adorned Dancer of Eastern Screen, set on the side of the City’s Castle in Via Quintino Sella 4.

This exhibition showcases a series of screens meticulously crafted using various intangible cultural heritage techniques, complemented by a range of lifestyle works such as porcelain, Nanjing Yunjin brocade, embroidery, lacquerware, tea sets, and furniture. It presents a perfect fusion of aesthetics and life, exploring and providing cross-cultural aesthetic inspiration and solutions for the global high-end customization field.

The pieces, both traditional and with a contemporary vibe, carry such grace and beauty that they’ll knock the breath right out of you, but this is not the only reason you should visit.

The exhibition is set on the upper floor of the palace, which also hosts the Museum of Art and Science, a unique institution dedicated to the intersection of art, science, and the authentication of artworks. Established in 1990 by German physicist and art enthusiast Gottfried Matthaes, the museum is housed in the 19th-century Palazzo Bonacossa, and is renowned for its educational approach to distinguishing authentic artworks from forgeries. It offers interactive exhibits that guide visitors through various materials and techniques used in art and antiquities, from paintings to ceramics to antique furniture. Each section is equipped with “test stations” featuring microscopes, magnifying glasses, and special lighting, allowing visitors to engage in hands-on analysis and learn about the characteristics that differentiate genuine artifacts from replicas.

The museum also features two rooms dedicated to Leonardo da Vinci, offering insights into his life and work during his time in Milan. Exhibits include studies on his “Treatise on Painting” and his contributions to art and science.

MDW2025 – Day 6

Aside from the running shoe I talked about yesterday, the Triennale also offers a nice collaboration between Ruffino, a renowned Italian winery established in 1877 in Pontassieve, near Florence, and a group of designers.

ORObyRUFFINO is their walk-through exhibition launched in 2024 and continuing into 2025, and celebrating the intersection of fine wine, Italian design, and art, drawing inspiration from Ruffino’s iconic Riserva Ducale Oro, a selection of Chianti Classico.​

In 2024, the exhibition was held at the Dazi di Levante and Dazi di Ponente in Piazza Sempione. Six international artists—Filippo Carandini, Rachel Lee Hovnanian, Chiara Lorenzetti, Ettore Marinelli, Tristano di Robilant, and Officine Saffi Lab—were invited to interpret the concept of gold, symbolizing transformation and renewal. Their works were displayed in a circular space, creating a dialogue between the pieces and offering visitors a multisensory experience that connected wine, art, and design.

The 2025 edition, picking up the main theme and titled “The Art of Connection,” is taking place at Triennale Milano. Curated by Marco Sammicheli, Director of the Museum of Italian Design downstairs, the exhibition featured five creative studios: Agustina Bottoni, Beatrice Dettori, Studio Martinelli Venezia, Millim Studio, and Uroš Mihić. Each artist explored themes of connection and conviviality through their unique interpretations, transforming the concept of togetherness into tangible art forms.

Among the Featured Artworks, my favourites have to be Grappolo by Agustina Bottoni, a cluster of blown glass reimagines the candelabrum as a symbol of warmth and conviviality, and Simposio by Studio Martinelli Venezia, where ancient rituals met everyday gestures in brass vessels that echo the Greek symposium.

 

The exhibition ends with the grand set-up of a banquet, where artists dressed up the bottles with different sculptures, all strictly in gold.

After the exhibition, the artworks will become part of Ruffino’s permanent collection at Tenuta Poggio Casciano, near Florence, further solidifying the winery’s commitment to blending art, design, and enology.

MDW2025 – Day 5

Have you ever been inside the technical sole of a running shoe? This is the experience subtly offered by Willo Perron for Vans in the “Checkered Future” installation at the Triennale Milano for the Design Week.

Through a stunning mixture of lights, sounds, smoke and moving mirrors, the experience is well worth the wait.

Video also here.

http://www.shelidon.it/splinder/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/MDW2025_CheckeredFuture.mp4

MDW2025 – Day 4

The Balvenie, renowned Scottish distillery, debuts at the Milan Design Week 2025 by collaborating with British artist and designer Dr. Samuel Ross MBE and his studio SR_A. The immersive installation “TRANSPOSITION” explores the future of hospitality, combining industrial craftsmanship and natural elements in the stunning setting of the Napoleonian Foundries at 21 Via Thaon di Revel in Milan’s Isola district.

The work features impressive copper sculptures that symbolize the whiskey distillation process, creating a unique sensory environment. Inside the foundry, elements such as mist, shadow, light and sound combine to provide an immersive experience inspired by the alchemy of whiskey production. A sculptural copper bar serves customized drinks in unique glasses.

A video is uploaded here.