“Scientia Potentia est”

Starting from the “Portrait of a woman holding a unicorn” of Raffaello Sanzio, this tablet shows both ancient and new concepts that give renewed interpretations to the history of human thought.
Raffaello’s work is clearly influenced by Leonardo’s genius and it refers us to the portrait of a young girl wearing a pendant around her neck. This pendant is typical of the wedding iconography: in the background, the clear landscape surrounds the young woman, probably noble.
On this tablet we can see a woman with the same Renaissance dress, symbol of the golden age of the Italian culture. But her face is no longer the same, it is modern: in her eyes and on her lips the consciousness of a new rebirth of the “thought”. The new woman is within a “space”, enclosed by the three space dimensions that we know. We can understand this considering the position of the spheres which identify the three different perspectives of views. Out of the open arches, the scenery is the cosmic landscape, the same seen by the three angles of space. “Reading” these three points of view, one after the other, implies the passing of time: our fourth dimension. In her hands, the new woman holds a sphere: it is the same as those which establish the parameters of space reference; but in the sphere there are galaxies reflected behind the woman, too. In the ancient Renaissance elegance, there is a new Renaissance: “Scentia potentia est”, as Bacon said. Science is power because it enables to control the instruments of knowledge and mastery, limited and unlimited geometries to see farther with new “eyes”… and even to smile with the certainty of a new intelligence.

Dimensions: 50x70
Mixed painting technique: “Pablo” pencil + tempera