L. Rebaudo, Demens Luctus. Un gesto dionisiaco del dolore, «Eidola» 11, 2014, pp. 161-174 (original) (raw)

L. Rebaudo, Demens Luctus. Un gesto dionisiaco del dolore, «Eidola» 11, 2014, pp. 161-174

The paper is focused on the impressive figure of an elderly, poorly dressed woman who stretches out her arms backwards as a sign of mourning in a number of Roman sarcophagi representing the Death of Meleager. This uncanonical schema is a good example of a ‘surviving’ Pathosformel, having been cited in Nicola Pisano’s Massacre of the Innocents in the pulpit of the Cathedral of Siena (ca 1265) and Giotto’s Mourning of Christ in the Scrovegni Chapel (ca 1306). According to M. L. Catoni the gesture would be derived from the so called ‘rescuer’, a woman rushing to the aid of a mother in labor, on a number of Attic grave stelai of the fourth century bc. Catoni’s assumption is that the very usual attitude of rescue – both arms forward – has been artificially reversed in sign of rejection. My interpretation is different: the gesture simply varies the Maenads’ orgiastic dance illustrating the topos of luctus demens. Pain makes people mad (just like wine and ecstasy), so despair in the face of the death can be represented through a manifestation of ecstatic madness. The dress falling from the shoulder, very common in the dancing Maenads, supports this interpretation.