LUIGI ONTANI Vergato 1943 Christopher Columbus, 1996-1998 Glazed terracotta painted in polychrome, 210 x 50 x 62 cm Signed under the base Made with Bottega Gatti, Faenza (composed of two parts) This polychrome-painted terracotta work depicting Christopher Columbus, created by Luigi Ontani in 1998, perfectly embodies the artist's eccentric and cultured aesthetic, which blends personal myths, history and popular culture in a visionary imagery. Ontani takes up the figure of Columbus not as an epic hero, but as a theatrical mask, an ambiguous and ironic simulacrum that questions the rhetoric of the 'great discoverer'. . The terracotta, an archaic and artisanal material, is charged with symbolism, while the bright polychromy restores an almost baroque theatricality, accentuating the allegorical aspect of the character. Colombo's face, often a self-portrait of the artist himself, becomes a medium for an identity game that blurs the boundaries between subject and representation.... . In this work, historical time is surpassed: Colombo becomes a timeless figure, reinterpreted through Ontani's imagination, where irony, citation and transformation come together in a poetics of disguise . . Provenance: Artist's studio Private collection, Milan