Dome

Detail, central figures, left "revenant" father figure; Il Ritornante, painted in Ferrara in 1918, counts among Giorgio De Chirico's major works. Its composition is typical of the series of 'metaphysical interiors' begun in 1916, representing figures and symbolic objects within enclosed spaces. Here there are two figures, the first, the enigmatic 'revenant' with its closed eyes and cruciform moustache and goatee, resurrects the artist's father Evariste De Chirico, who had died in 1905. This railway engineer father finds himself several times exorcised in his son's work, in the appearance of geometrical instruments and of a series of coded representations of men. In the centre of the composition, a decapitated and mutilated tailor's dummy leaning against a scaffolding of geometrical instruments represents 'the spirit of our age,' denounced by Raoul Hausmann in his Tête mécanique of 1919. Source: Centre Pompidou [website]; http://www.centrepompidou.fr/en/ (accessed 7/16/2015)