Dome

Overall view; In 1913 de Chirico sold his first painting at the Salon d’Automne, and attended the social gatherings of Guillaume Apollinaire, finding in him an encouraging critic and an inspiring friend. Apollinaire was the first to apply the term "metaphysical" to de Chirico’s art. In the portrait of Apollinaire, de Chirico’s characteristic device of filling the foreground is exaggerated by the steep perspective and the vertical white slab with fish and shell molds. Color is restricted almost to monochrome, and the composition as a whole is almost abstract but for the classical bust, which acts as a partner to the silhouette of the poet above. Apollinaire encouraged the suggestion that the portrait likened him to the mythical poet Orpheus. Source: Grove Art Online; http://www.oxfordartonline.com/ (accessed 5/30/2014)