De pictura (La Trinità), 1977

All together the nine canvases suggest the design of a room in perspective, where the overturned canvas simulates the verso of a painting situated on the fourth wall of the room. The scene is inhabited by a figure wearing a costume, who seems to observe the front of the painting that is kept out of our view. The attention to the visual act reflects our own presence before the work we are looking at (as is also suggested by the autograph inscriptions on the overturned canvas, certifying both the painting observed by the virtual figure and the work before us).
The original location chosen for the display of the work, one of the walls in the cloister of the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, located behind which is Masaccio's fresco of the Trinità (1426-28) – evoked in the spatial framing of the drawing in perspective – was what gave Paolini the idea for the particular formulation of the layout of this version of De pictura (a group of six works with the same title, developed between 1977 and 1979, GPO-0344, GPO-0345, GPO-0367, GPO-0385, GPO-0412, GPO-0417). The figure alludes to Brunelleschi, the Renaissance architect at the heart of the group show for which the work was conceived.