Atena

Athena is the Greek goddess of wisdom, of webbing and of the most noble aspects of war, she is depicted with the armor and the helmet on the forehead. She has the lance and the buckler on which is depicted Gorgone Medusa. On the head or on the shoulder there is often a owl that, with the olive, is one of the sacred attributes of the goddess. She has silver eyes, so in poetry she is defined “glaukopis”, a combination between “glaukos” –shining/argent- and “ops”-eye- as “glaux” in greec is the owl. The same origin unites the goddess at the owl for the eyes of the animal, with witch it can see on the night. Thanks to this characteristic it can communicate to the goddess what happened in world of darkness, indispensable for she that personifies also the sapience.
For the Medea Residence I proposed some sketches that depicting Atena in accordance with the classic iconography statuary and vascular, among these was then chosen what I have realized on canvas with acrylics. It’s chosen a goddess that although depicted with typical attributes- helmet, buckler, lance, egis, owl- she exudes freedom in the composition and in the colors, where with the azure, the gold predominates, in different shades. Atena was covered in gold in the chryselephantine statue of the Parthenon that Fidia had carved and this could be a link between the past and the present in an ancient journey among olive and citrus groves that, to evoke the myth poses a suggestion of beauty where in my opinion fits well my work.

Mirella Bolognari