A. De Luca (1979) - Prima del Sipario

Before the Curtain
Oil on canvas, 40 × 30 cm
A. De Luca

In an intimate suspension of time, A. De Luca depicts a young ballerina caught in the most private and revealing moment of her art: the moment before she goes on stage.
Seated on a low wooden stool, the figure occupies with natural elegance the center-right of the composition. The torso is slightly leaned forward, the head bowed in a gesture of absolute concentration. The blonde hair is gathered into a soft bun, held by a small white flower that seems to capture the last light before the darkness of the stage. The face, barely veiled in shadow, expresses a quiet, almost sacred dedication.
Hands – slender, precise fingers – are tying the long satin ribbons of the pointe shoes. The gesture is slow, deliberate: it is not yet dance, it is still prayer. The white leotard clings to the skin with the lightness of a second skin, while the tutu opens around the hips in a cloud of impalpable tulle, painted with dense, vibrant, almost sculptural brushstrokes. Each fold of the tulle seems to breathe, catching light and air in a play of luminous whites, cool blues, and touches of pearly gray.
The legs, strong and trained by daily discipline, contrast with the apparent fragility of the dress. The ballet slippers, perfectly white, are already tied halfway; the ribbon the dancer is tying winds between her fingers like a thread of fate. The feet, arched in the typical en pointe position even when seated, speak of years of sacrifice and of a grace won at a high price.
The background is deliberately ephemeral, a breath of color: emerald greens and cobalt blues blend into an atmosphere of backstage or rehearsal room, while on the right a pink-purple drape, soft and fleshy, reminds us that behind this quiet there is the theater, the audience, the harsh light of the spotlights. The floor, barely suggested with damp reflections, seems to hold back the echo of footsteps that will soon cross it.
The light, soft and oblique, comes from the left and shapes the body with a tenderness almost Caravaggesque, highlighting the curve of the shoulder, the contour of the breast, the pure line of the neck. It is a light that does not reveal, but caresses: it transforms the concreteness of the body into something ethereal, suspended between matter and dream.
De Luca, with a technique that blends the rigor of contemporary realism with the freedom of the impressionist brush, manages to render palpable the silence that precedes music. There is no rhetoric, there is no sentimentality: only the naked truth of a body preparing to transform itself into pure emotion.
In this small, intense oil on canvas, the artist gives us not only a dancer, but the very essence of dance: that invisible moment when exhaustion becomes grace, pain becomes lightness, and a girl of flesh and bone becomes, for an instant, immortal.