Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo, Ricordo di un dolore, 1889. Una lettrice (e una lettura) per l’elaborazione di un lutto

The essay proposes new visual and literary sources for one of the most famous paintings by Pellizza da Volpedo in his early years<: Ricordo di un dolore (1889), dedicated to the memory of his deceased sister. Through the review of unpublished or little known archival sources, the contribution clarifies circumstances and reasons of the painting and indicates within the artist's aspirations for an ideal and universal language, as per the most authentic international symbolist culture. The act of reading and the reader himself / herself, beyond the specific occasion of the re-elaboration of a personal mourning, becomes the foundation of a cultured painting and a metalinguistic reflection on the value of the act of painting itself.