"Who is more miserable than those who, on seeing the happiness of others are saddened by a grief which makes them even more guilty? Were they to love what they see in others and cannot have, in a certain way this love would make them possess it", was Gregorio Magno’s exhortation in the first Millennium, using words difficult to live up to in daily life, in a world which extols wealth and the splendour of power. How not to understand the suffering of an ugly woman, at the sight of the composed spirituality of beauty? A surge of envy comes instinctively and harshly. If reason does not discipline and dominate it, the painful suffering is increased, the facial features harden, the expression in the eyes becomes sad and nasty, the body turns livid with ominous thinness like a sterile shoot. Envy hides behind a black veil and perhaps plots in the shadows. She wishes she could obscure the other woman the one on the right serene and conscious of her own beauty, immersed in bright light and lying on a white drape. Black and white. The painter is basic in keeping to the theme, with no hint of dramatic or affected surplus.
