Giorgio De Chirico. Munich 1909 - Two Double-sided Oil-on-wood Panels, 40 X 25.3 Cm

After their father’s death, Giorgio de Chirico and his brother, accompanied by their mother, left Greece and settled in Munich in 1906. Giorgio studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and produced the few early works of his that have survived. He often included a distinctive black band at the bottom of each painting, where he would sometimes inscribe the date and his signature. In these two oil paintings—on the front and back of the same panel—the front depicts a faun gazing at the décolletage of a young woman wearing a Renaissance dress. On the reverse, de Chirico’s profile is depicted as a woman, her hair loose and holding a carnation. Beneath the Renaissance woman, the black band bears the inscription “Munich 1909.” It would seem that the painter sought to illustrate, on the same panel, the duality inherent in his being. This duality—sensitive to feminine beauty on the one hand—contrasts with his delicate and profound sensitivity on the other. Painted when he was only 21, this work reflects the profound vitality of the young de Chirico, already in his pre-metaphysical phase.