They say the number of human faces is as finite as the number of metaphors; history merely reshuffles them in a random order, leading us to believe in novelty. In Venice, that labyrinthine city where every canal reflects what has already come to pass, this thought acquires the weight of stone.
Recently, guided less by a guidebook than by a whim of chance, I found myself in the San Polo sestiere. My destination was the Scuola Grande di San Rocco – a treasury of Tintoretto, a place where shadows seem denser than matter itself. However, the true mystery awaited me in the adjoining Church of San Rocco.
There, on one of the massive columns to the left of the altar (note the red circle), is a relief from the early 16th century. Its creator, Giovanni Maria Mosca, whose mastery of the chisel was called “silent magic” by his contemporaries, ventured a bold experiment. He translated into the cold marble of Paduan stone the drama of Titian’s famous painting, Christ Carrying the Cross. Beneath the inscription EX VOTO, the eternal plot of the Passion unfolds.
But while the central figures of the Savior and the executioner obediently follow the canons of the Cinquecento, the figure on the far right – peering over Christ’s shoulder – forced me to stop.
Look closely at this profile.
Before us is a face we are accustomed to seeing in the glow of modern screens and on the front pages of newspapers: the face of Donald Trump. What is striking is not so much the portrait resemblance itself, but the defiant anachronism of his appearance. The characteristic tilt of the head, the specific line of the lips, and above all, the architecture of the hair – a sculptural vortex of locks, entirely untypical of Venetian fashion five centuries ago, yet so recognizable today.
How should one interpret this anachronism? Was it a caprice of Mosca, deciding to capture a face he saw in one of his dreams? Or has time in the Church of San Rocco looped, allowing the future to seep through the pores of the marble?
Borges might have said that we are all but actors performing roles in a play written by a deity who long ago lost interest in the plot, yet continues to use the same masks. When we study ancient images, we are not looking for art history, but for confirmation of our own immortality – or, more likely, the infinite repetition of our triumphs and falls.
That day in Venice, I realized: one does not need to believe in the transmigration of souls. It is enough simply to look closely at the stones.
