Succubus 2014

This is Roberto Ferri's painting Succubus and it makes me think about how much guts it takes to pick up a brush and work with a palette of muted browns and grays in the twenty-first century! The painting has this hyper-real, almost photographic quality, but then you notice all these soft details and gradations that give it a very human, handmade feel. It’s not a photograph. It’s more interesting than that. I can imagine Ferri, completely in his element, building up the tones, layering the glazes, and obsessing over every little detail, from the texture of the wings to the subtle blush on the woman's skin. The Pre-Raphaelites and the Symbolists would have looked at the image and felt a pang of recognition; you can see a dialogue with Caravaggio in the Baroque drama of light and shadow, in the artist's sensitivity to the human form, and in the air of mystery. Each painter builds on what came before, learning from the masters, and finding their own way.