De Chirico’s Nostalgie du poète: Pittura Metafisica’s First Visual Manifesto
Barzaghi, Miriam
Barzaghi, Miriam
Citations
Altmetric:
Abstract
The life and work of the Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) have long attracted the attention of scholars, both in Italy—such as Paolo Baldacci, Lorenzo Canova, Maurizio Fagiolo dell’ Arco, Elena Pontiggia, and Claudio Spadoni—and internationally, including Matthew Gale, Alain Jouffroy, Ara H. Merjian, Gerd Roos, and Willard Bohn. Extensive research has been conducted on de Chirico’s intellectual and cultural background, which includes the study of the philosophies of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Freud, and a significant interest for Greek mythology. Much of the scholarship has emphasized the artist’s early period in Italy, highlighting the pivotal role of Florence in 1910 in the emergence of Pittura Metafisica. This focus has often overshadowed the significance of de Chirico’s formative years in Paris (1911–1915), which this thesis seeks to re-evaluate. This study contends that it was within the vibrant artistic and intellectual milieu of Paris that de Chirico laid the foundations of his metaphysical language. Central to this development were his interactions with avant-garde circles, his profound relationship with the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire, and the creative dialogue with his brother, Alberto Savinio—primarily a musician and writer, though also a painter—whose role in introducing de Chirico to the Parisian art world in 1911 was crucial. In the City of Light, de Chirico undertook fruitful, and transformative, artistic production. While de Chirico’s artistic practice caught the attention of major Parisian critics of the time, such as André Salmon, Maurice Raynal, Louis Vauxcelles and most importantly, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, the works de Chirico made in Paris before the war remain largely understudied. This thesis centres on La Nostalgie du poète, a painting from early 1914, proposing it as a key event in the crystallization of Pittura Metafisica, whose beginnings are traditionally dated to 1910, in Florence. Through a detailed formal and contextual analysis of the work, in dialogue iii with Portrait of Guillaume Apollinaire and close readings of texts by Apollinaire and Savinio, this study reconsiders the broader cultural influences that influenced de Chirico’s evolving visual and theoretical vocabulary during his time in Paris. It identifies recurrent metaphysical motifs— including the figure of Orpheus, the shadow, the fish, the shell, and the tailoring mannequin— and argues for the painting’s status as an early, if not the first, visual manifesto of Pittura Metafisica. This thesis draws on archival material from the Fondazione Giorgio e Isa de Chirico, his Casa-Museo, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, the Biblioteca di Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte in Rome, and the Castello Sforzesco’s art libraries, and it also extensively examines de Chirico’s own writings. In doing so, it offers a nuanced reconsideration of La Nostalgie du poète, repositioning it at the very heart of Pittura Metafisica’s genesis.
Description
Thesis (B.A. in Art History and Business Administration)--John Cabot University, Spring 2025.
Date
2025
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Collections
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Keywords
Giorgio De Chirico, 1888-1978, Metaphysical school (Art movement), Italian painting
Citation
Barzaghi, Miriam. "De Chirico’s Nostalgie du poète: Pittura Metafisica’s First Visual Manifesto". BA Thesis, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy. 2025.