Pincio-Warhol-Caravaggio: for a triple self-portrait

Abstract

This essay analyzes the novel Il dono di saper vivere (2018) by Tommaso Pincio on the basis of double gift of the writer-painter. By a textual and visual analysis, it shows the analogy between the metabiofiction about Caravage and the artwork of Pincio, especially Sfere celesti, by showing also a connection with specific rhetorical and thematical aspects of Pop Art and in particular of Andy Warhol’s work, as interpreted by Don DeLillo in Mao II (1991). In both textual and visual work, according to Pincio the portrait of others is not only a possibility to portrait himself, but also a stratified representation of various gazes which contribute to create a «true portrait of the myth», therefore an unfaithful, false portrait.