At the heart of De Chirico’s question regarding the relationship between metaphysics and perspective is the inference that this relationship is perplexing to the point of being troubling. The 3-Projections and particularly the metastasis version show this to be the case. They highlight the fact that perspective, which we traditionally think of as functioning within an optical-mimetic context, can function equally well in an incorporeal context. It can depict a world beyond physics, a world suspended between dissolution and becoming – in essence a metaphysical world. This may seem a simplistic observation, especially in the light of the last sixty years of modern art, which has placed so much value on the excesses that result when an artist’s ego is given free-reign to create all manner of meta-worlds.  However, in the early years of the twentieth century De Chirico’s poetic understanding of the laws of perspective and their metaphysical potential represented a revelation, if not a quantum leap of consciousness. Many famous twentieth century painters (some of whom are cited above) were inspired by the body of work he produced during this period despite their lack of understanding of it, as evidenced by the word that came to characterise his early work – enigmatic.

 

The Tragic-Style

To a certain extent De Chirico’s oeuvre will always remain ‘enigmatic’, because, as he declared, emotion and not theory underpinned his paintings, thus making them hermetically resistant to ‘explanation’. This does not, however, prevent us from penetrating deeper into the enigma. And this is the point in the chronological mystery where the once buried tragic-style wall-paintings from Pompeii and Herculaneum enter the frame. A wall-painting in the Corinthian oecus situated in the House of the Labyrinth in Pompeii exemplifies the tragic-style (fig.1). It depicts a temenos or peristyle sanctuary with a walled-up entrance beyond which a circular shrine or tholos is visible. The painting displays a sophisticated knowledge of perspective, which is quite remarkable when one considers that it was painted some one thousand four hundred years before Brunelleschi and Alberti codified the laws of perspective. Initially, I considered the interplay between entrance (becoming) and exit (dissolution) in these ancient paintings to be emblematic of the formal qualities defined by the Metastasis Projection. Later it became clear to me that De Chirico’s metaphysical compositions were not only conceptually related to them, but also as I became acquainted with more examples of the tragic-style, I became increasingly aware that De Chirico’s oeuvre shared numerous compositional similarities. Only later did I realise that many of the tragic-style paintings had ‘literally’ come to light after De Chirico’s. Apart from this mysterious fact, what excited me was the possibility that these ancient paintings afforded a cross-textual model for exploring De Chirico’s hitherto hermetic compositions.