The root meaning of the word tholos is “to go or depart” and the origins of this architectural form can be traced back to the tumulus. The ancient burial mound being signified by the cupola that normally caps this architectural form (fig.1).  In De Chirico’s dream novel Hebdomeros, published in 1929, there is an indication of the significance he assigned to this architectural image. The tholos at Delphi is referred to as the “Temple of Immortality”. (Peter Owen, ed, p.73) The tholos, in conjunction with the wall, is not only a reoccurring motif throughout his pictorial oeuvre, but also a defining feature of his Piazza d’Italia paintings, a theme he reworked many times over. The tholoi in the Piazza d’Italia series often appear stacked on top of each other in a manner reminiscent of objects constructed using a set of children’s toy bricks (fig.2). In the Knight Errant series, painted in the early 1920s, De Chirico leaves us in no doubt as to its true iconic significance. In The Departure of the Knight Errant the tholos appears in its fully developed architectural form, symbolizing a shrine dedicated to divinities and the souls of the departed (fig.3-4). The painting resonates with an uncanny melancholic atmosphere associated with the kind of departure from which there is no return. This Knight Errant waves forlornly at the statuesque figure in the tholos whilst Charon, the ferryman of departed souls, rows him across the river Styx to begin his endless crusade.

The primary cross-textual similarities between De Chirico’s oeuvre and Romano-Campanian tragic-style painting exist in terms of the wall and the tholos, both of which are located within similar dislocated perspectival systems. Other less obvious similarities exist in terms of colour, scale, numerous classical references and the use of pictorial mise-en-abyme. For the purposes of this essay, however, the wall and the tholos are the two crucial images linking this important twentieth century artist to the ancient wall-paintings. Amongst the less obvious connections between De Chirico’s metaphysical paintings and the ancient paradigmatic model is the concept of the painting within the painting, numerous references to votive culinary offerings and the image of Ariadne. Her statuesque form appears in several of his paintings and is invariably depicted in the archetypal sleeping pose, situated on a plinth located in front of a wall behind which a tholos-like image is visible. (fig.5).

De Chirico’s numerous depictions of the sleeping Ariadne suggests that she may well have had a personal as well as a symbolic significance for him, possibly signifying both the artist's use of oneiric visions and as a symbol of his deceased father. In the final page of his novel the wondering hero Hebdomeros is reunited with his dead father who appears to him in the form of the goddess immortality.

The juxtaposition of the sleeping Ariadne with the wall and the tholos echoes Gilbert Picard’s observation concerning pictorial tomb facades in Second Style wall-painting and in particular their location in master bedrooms...the room of dreams. Sleep, death and spiritual awakening are a common thread in De Chirico’s oeuvre and ancient tragic-style wall-painting. Ariadne, as the personification of involuntary sleep (Hypnos) mirroring death (Thanatos), emerges as the symbol of spiritual or creative awakening because of her ancient association with Dionysus, the underworld god associated with ‘reawakening’.