A dull sound, similar to the sound of a deep organ pipe, accompanies the first sequences of Pietro Roccasalva’s video work “Giocondità”, created in 2002.
The sound almost forces distance and respect from the viewer.
This corresponds to the mood of the weighty grandeur of the sacred building that Roccasalva animated for the work and around which the camera slowly moves in the course of the film.
Only when the building has been circled and the church comes into view in its entirety does the sound subside and is replaced by a stirring orchestra playing the rousing melody of a piece of circus music.
With the change in musical accompaniment, the mood of the animated images also changes, no longer showing the abstract and cool passages of the building, but rather the great dome of the church, represented in the form of an oversized lemon press, while at the same time turning on its own axis like a carny’s carousel at the annual fair.
Pietro Roccasalva’s “Giocondità” is a modern, dreamy and fantastic vision that plays on the centuries-old idea of the brilliant artist, driving this ad absurdum with great ingenuity and humour.