Evangelical Still Life 1916 is one of several examples from De Chirico's Interior series that uses maps instead of inserted paintings to suggest the presence of a world beyond the room (fig.1). But what are we to make of the food motifs above the map? Surely the title itself must indicate a votive act. A painting with the same title produced a year later depicts a statuesque figure, possibly a reference to a deity, looking towards offerings in the form of biscuits (fig.2). The Death of a Spirit and Greetings of a Distant Friend are two further examples that support this theory (figs.3-4). Once again, this form of votive painting connects De Chirico’s oeuvre to the ancient wall-paintings in which we see similar uses of culinary votive motifs placed before entrances, such as those discussed earlier in the House of Marcus Lucretius Fronto.

His entire Interior series supports the notion of the interior as an indexical sign pointing to a space or presence beyond itself. It is painting, both as indexical sign and symbol – signifier and signified. In Metaphysical Silent Life, paintied in 1973 just five years before his death, De Chirico reinvoked a theme first cited in 1916 that further reveals what is implicit in his Interior Series (fig.5). We can clearly see the heroised ancestor spirit, the eidolon, that has for nearly seventy years dwelled within the metaphysical perspectives of De Chirico’s deep space. Finally the hitherto shadowy presence is seen emerging to partake of the offerings placed upon the family hearth. If we consider this painting alongside his various versions on the theme Temple in a Room, then the extraordinary similarity between his work and the tragic-style becomes only too apparent. These paintings transform the room into a temenos, a walled enclosure as exemplified by the Apollonian garden shrine depicted in the Villa Poppea (fig.6) and the tholos sanctuary wall-painting in the Villa di Labirinto.