Hand-signed, hand-numbered limited edition Giclée print. Edition of 25.
Pick size from dropdown menu. Includes ~1" white border. Unframed.

Artist’s Note:

This is a paraphrase of the portrait painted by Pietro Perugino in 1494, "Portrait of Francesco delle Opere." Delle Opere was a friend of Perugino and a wealthy jeweler. In his hand, he holds a scroll resembling a flag, on which a fragment of text is visible. I deciphered that those few visible letters are part of a phrase from the Book of Revelation in the New Testament: "Timete Deum..." The full phrase is "Fear God and give Him glory, because the hour of His judgment is coming..."

I compressed subsequent historical events and alluded to the French Revolution and the guillotine to which the rich like this jeweler were sent. In my work, his head is almost detached from his body. He was sent to judgment not by God's court, but by godless revolutionary atheists, so familiar to me from my native Soviet Union history.

The "issues" with the anatomy of the hands and face in the portrait psychologically manifest the inner energies of such a personage.

The landscape behind his back on the left consists of sharp brownish-yellow abstract wedges cutting through the idyllic landscape. On the right, abstract forms turn into surrealism, which, as I see it, is an escape from life into fantasy. The left and right parts of the landscape behind his back do not quite match. This is a reference to the Mona Lisa.

Here bits of my knowledge of history, art, and religion are crunched together.