“An archetypal image”, Edoardo Tresoldi says, “is capable of creating a dialogue between past and present, using a language comprised of meanings that recur over time.”

Again he tarries in this trade: the recurrent symbol or motif in architecture lifted from its source and presented in wire and light to evoke hallowed, revered spaces elsewhere. It’s a stunning realization that your emotional rapture is triggered in some way, insignificant or profound, by this relatively simple recreative act.

Opening this week at the Art Museum of the City of Ravenna, Tresoldi re-calls his piece called Sacral for an exhibition called “Dante. The Eyes and the Mind”. Viewable until January 9 the installation occupies the eye of your mind, the central tenant of this Castle of the Great Souls. According to Dante, this central location – pivotal, buoyant, luminous – “is a symbolic place inhabited by the souls of those who left honor and fame behind them on earth. They are the great souls of antiquity – philosophers, poets, scientists, and writers – with grave and slow-moving eyes.”

We’re pleased to help readers gaze upon it and see what essence has been captured from the 16th-century cloister that is relevant to our present – or at the very least, inspirational to it.

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