Dream of the Virgin

paper, acrylic paint, uv paint

5 x 2 m

Created in London in 2022, this piece spurred the future Museo Sant’Orsola in Florence to invite Sophia as their first artist in residence. Dream of the Virgin demonstrates the singular capacity of the artist to question and revisit classical art.

The monumental painting reinterprets a small, 14th century panel painting, kept in the National Gallery in London and attributed to the Bolognese painter Simone dei Crocifissi. Sophia was immediately attracted by its rare iconography, which shows the sleeping Virgin Mary, from whose womb springs a tree that bears the crucified Christ. Below her, a hand that descends from the bed opens the doors to Purgatory to free Adam and Eve. Although this unusual subject gives particular emphasis to the figure of the Virgin as the ‘holy root’ of Christ the Redeemer, the role of the woman – that of acceptance and obedience to divine will – remains fundamentally ‘passive.’

In her monumental painting, Sophia reinterprets the traditional iconography, flipping the meaning on its head. The liberation of Adam and Eve is transformed into a claustrophobic and hellish mixture of inhuman figures; the characters assume the semblance of agonized masks, which recall the art of the visionary James Ensor (Belgium, 1860-1949). The figure of Mary is also made ambivalent, transformed into an abandoned body, without a face, that a skeleton attempts to drag downwards. In Sophia’s work there does not appear to be space for any attempts at redemption, only chaos. This is not random; the artist was inspired by certain macabre images, such as the medieval Triumph of the Dead paintings and the series of engravings known as The Disasters of War by the Spanish painter Francisco Goya (1746-1828). The result is a work that remains open to interpretation.

Published: Oltre le Mura di Sant’Orsola, Sophia Kisielewska and Alberto Ruce, 1 June - 2 July 2023, exhibition catalogue

Exhibited: Museo Sant’Orsola, Florence, 2 September - 1 October 2023