The Nightmare… of Europa

The work begins from two iconographic references through which it seeks to question the present: the myth of the Rape of Europa, as it has been developed in various paintings — among them those by Veronese and Tiepolo — and Füssli’s The Nightmare.

In this work by Riccardo Toso Borella, created using the sgraffito technique on 24-karat gold leaf and Murano glass, an imagined oneiric vision of the mythological Europa unfolds, taken as a figure through which to investigate and bring to light the deepest fears now creeping across the continent.

In the myth, Europa is abducted by the god Zeus, who takes the form of a bull in order to unite with her. Here, however, the artist imagines the scene as though that abduction belonged to a remote past, and as if years of married life had passed between the two. Zeus and Europa now appear emotionally distant. Bull-Zeus — whose features recall the bull painted by Tiepolo in The Rape of Europa — no longer loves Europa as he once did, no longer shares her bed, and it is precisely for this reason that monsters are able to break into her oneiric and psychic space.

A little creature with a comical tuft, almost like a comb-over, sits upon her stomach, while an infernal horse threatens Europa’s room from behind the curtain on which the flag of the European Union is painted.

Their nature remains ambiguous: do they still belong to the nightmare, or are they already beginning to take shape in reality? And, if we choose to interrogate the dream, what meanings might we draw from it?