‘Great is the emotional impact of the Ecce Homo and such as can only be understood by an analysis made at a number of different interpretative levels. On the one hand its main-theme is the death of man. The face is broken up. In the upper right section, the convolutions of one of the cerebral hemispheres are visible. The figure, which circumscribes and limits the person, at the same time enabling it to exist, is breaking up. Something brings to mind the great lesson of expressionism and this breaking up of the figure is perhaps at the same time symbolic of the breaking up of a creature and of the limits of the man behind it. The grey colour and the grimace of the face enphasize the experience of pain. On the other hand, the body’s breaking up means food for the earth The reticulated floor absorbs the blood that runs from the body. As Rilke says in his “Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes”: “Yonder rose the wonderful vision of the mine of the dead souls. Teeming in the dark like silent silver threads. Among the roots spurted the blood that flows on toward the living in the dark as hard as porphyry. Nought else was there coloured red.” We do not know whether the recollection is a conscious one or whether it is born from the intuition of this same reality. In any case, we are introduced to another movement o the painting; the panic sense of universal life in which individual e is dissolved and yet, at the same time, from this dissolution is nourished in accordance with a Jaw which is tragic yet benevolent for all creatures. The painting can then be interpreted in a completely opposite way. The earth below can be seen to represent the placenta which nourishes a new being who, instead of dissolving, is taking shape. Are we witnessing birth or death? Who can say? In a sense only faith. From the first interpretative level appears a more radical truth. The man is Christ who takes on His shoulders the sins of the world, the greyness of damaged or lost lives, reduced to the absurdness of a continuous dying in weariness and squalor. In dying Christ becomes bread, the Host through which he communicates life. At the same time, the face is that of a Christian who, nourished by the placenta is shaped for true life. All this and much more for the power of a true work of art to evo-ke; a work that can be interpreted numerous times and always present itself as a something absolutely new. Like faith and like life. Rocco Buttiglione’