Scrivere un quadro, ovvero come provare a rendere trasparente l’opacità

The essay explores the complex relationship between visual art and verbal representation, focusing on the philosophical and aesthetic implications of describing a painting through writing. Using Evangelina Alciati’s Portrait of Fiorenza Boccalatte as a case study, the article contrasts the transparency of photography—where the viewer perceives the subject directly—with the opacity of painting, where the represented subject is always mediated by the artist’s intentionality. Drawing on thinkers such as Roger Scruton, Kendall Walton, and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, the essay highlights how writing can attempt to “make transparent” the opacity of painting, translating brushstrokes and atmospheres into linguistic form. It argues that writing a painting does not mean merely transposing visual data into verbal terms but rather enacting an interpretative gesture that captures the painter’s vision and engages the viewer’s own perception, judgment, and imagination. The project!“Scrivere 1 quadro”, conducted at the Pinacoteca Albertina in Turin, exemplifies this practice by inviting participants to write creatively in response to unknown artworks. Ultimately, the essay defends a hermeneutic approach to art and language, where both painting and writing become vehicles of meaning through their irreducibly different but dialogical modes of expression.