CLOAK & DAGGER

How several of Pierpaolo Piccioli’s picturesque models from his Valentino Fall 2018 runway inadvertently resembled the muses captured in Tamara de Lempicka’s Art Deco paintings, most notably The Green Veil, The Blue Madonna and Teresa de Avila, her rendition of Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s magnificent 17th Century marble sculpture, The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa…. Piccioli’s cloaked cat-walkers emerged from their jewel-tone hoods, a common fixture in Lempicka’s au courant portraits, and very much reminiscent of the biblical heroines painted during the time of Bernini’s High Roman Baroque sculpture… Considered by many to be his pièce de résistance, the work paints a scene portraying Teresa of Ávila in a state of religious ecstasy as a result of an angel stabbing her with a divine golden arrow, filling her with the love of God…

After much success in Europe, Lempicka, a Polish Jewess and champion of the Art Deco movement, fled Europe with her husband from the rising power of Nazi Germany, motivating her to shift gears in terms of her painting’s subject matters. While continuing to masterfully fuse Cubism and Mannerism, Lempicka moved away from the fashionable protagonists of her early portraits, and began to paint peasants, refugees and religious figures inspired by early Christian art. Though her painterly point of view evolved with the grim state of the world, Lempicka continued to infuse her paintings with a sense of romance and sensuality, quite like Piccioli who referenced “Romanticism” when describing his collection…Though romanticism might not be a common description of religion, one might characterize the 16th Century Spanish Saint, Teresa of Ávila, a Carmelite nun, prominent Spanish mystic, religious reformer, author, prominent Doctor of the Church, and of course, the muse for Bernini’s marble masterpiece, as religiously romantic. The bridal mysticism that inspired Teresa of Ávila, which in turn inspired Bernini’s sculpture, and later Lempicka’s paintings, also pervaded Piccioli’s garments, just as the angel’s golden arrow penetrated Saint Teresa’s heart. • All Collages by Moi