In 1975, a museum was dedicated to him inside the Charterhouse of San Giacomo, again on Capri. The 31 works kept at the Museum enable a reconstruction of the figurative path of the artist’s latter production – “a symbolist visionary linked to the romantic sentiment of nature and imbued with theosophical content”[1] – while at the same time, through their mystical and dreamlike vision of Capri, representing a testimony of the artist’s existential experience (theosophy, vegetarianism, nudism), which made him a real celebrity. Capri, lush and hospitable, yet mysterious and unsettling, evoked that feeling of the sublime which he sought and recreated in his works.

These are large canvases painted with colours which are sometimes bright, other times gloomy, and they represent mythical places on the island in an unreal way, landscapes made arcane by a sense of solitude, and mystical or symbolic scenes.

 

In the painting presented here, the artist has depicted The Villa of Tiberius on Capri, known as “Villa Jovis”, built in the first century AD by the Roman Emperor Tiberius on the easternmost promontory of the island, Mount Tiberius, at 334 metres above sea level. Its lofty location affords a view of the islands of Ischia and Procida, the Gulf of Naples, the Sorrento peninsula, and then the Gulf of Salerno as far as the lands of Cilento.

From here and from his other villas on the island of Capri, Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus ruled the Empire for over eleven years.

In the painting, an intense, otherworldly light cuts out the profile of the building standing on the coast. Almost vision-like, the villa emerges from the promontory swathed in dark flaming brushstrokes and lit by a dawning glow, as if, on that mountain, only it was able to catch the rays of the sun and escape the darkness. The tones ranging from scorched earth colours to reds, and the smoky effect of the dark shadows along with the strong variations in light, magnify the strongly theatrical atmosphere of the scene.