Hector and Andromache

Mediums: oil, canvas.
Location: The National Gallery of Modern Art (Rome, Italy).

The heroes of paintings by de Chirico are often not only cities and symbolic objects but also strange creatures looking like people – phantoms and mannequins without faces. These artificial, bewildering and horrifying figures, with prostheses instead of limbs, appeared in the artist’s work under the influence of paintings by Fernand Leger, depicting the so-called “mechanical people”. In the works of de Chirico, these mannequins become the heroes of ancient myths, replacing the gypsum statues that were previously present in the canvases. Depicted on the background of the same desert landscapes, they create a unique reality, their metaphysical world, similar to a dream or hallucination.