In the burning flower works the violence of the moment is exalted by the beauty of the image itself recalling 'the sublime' and famous artistic representations of the martyrdom of Christian saints according to a typical visual sensitivity of Seventeenth Century art. Like the paintings of the Holy Martyrs by Guido Reni, these works are tied to an aesthetic based on the collision/ encounter between the lust of the flesh and the brutality of torture, an opposition similar to that of eros/ thanatos that creates in the viewer mixed feelings while giving the work a quasi mystical aura.
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