Don Giovanni nel deserto, 1992-20

A photographic reproduction of the painting Saint John the Baptist in the Desert (1445-48) by Domenico Veneziano is held between two plexiglas sheets inserted in a transparent base. The image is made to stand out by the reproduction of lit spotlights, turned towards the saint – especially by the reflector inserted in the area corresponding to the tunic that he lays down with his left hand –, which seem to illuminate the instant of a revelation. In the foreground, the cut-out image of John the Baptist Reclining by Caravaggio (1610) is held in a plexiglas support, while a clip-on spotlight, which is off, amplifies the game of reflectors that guide the viewer’s attention towards the scene.
The title implies an exchange of identity between the religious figure of Saint John the Baptist – an ascetic who lived a life of penitence and prayer in the desert, in exile from the world – and the literary figure of Don Juan, a bold, irreverent libertine. For the artist, the two opposing figures are joined by one fate: “Both the ascetic saint, the pure soul ‘crying in the desert’, and the unrepentant Don Juan, a serial womanizer, are condemned to exceptionalness veined with solitude”.1
This work is the fourth variant of a theme that was begun in 1990 (GPO-0664) and was developed with two other versions in 1992 (GPO-0697, GPO-0699).

1 G. Paolini, in conversation with B. Della Casa, July 2020.