An Icon wtih a Thousand Faces

Lina Cavalieri emerged from the pages of a late 19th century magazine, a classical beauty with an enigmatic gaze. Fascinated by her, Piero Fornasetti dedicated an endless series of variations, multiples, games, poetic ideas and metaphysical portraits to the face of the famous opera singer. Suggestive, mysterious, surprised, seductive, with a moustache, glasses, a crown or a balaclava: however it is reinvented, Lina's face remains unmistakable. An icon that has become the symbol of Fornasetti and his poetics.