Beyond the littoral. The symbolic meanings taken on by the coastline in European figurative art

The report intends to trace the evolution of the symbolic meanings taken on by the coastline in the European culture of the modern age, up to the threshold of the post-modern age. Our itinerary begins from the conception of a new centrality for man, set in motion by Humanism and glorified by the Renaissance. The view of the sea from the shore is a constant source of stimuli and mixed feelings, the mirror of unresolved conflicts but also the means to perceive the unity of human experience. The light on the shore, especially at down, renews the mystery of the world and its beginnings day by day; there is the depth of the sea, receptacle of history debris and every day life, that becomes the symbolic site of memory and oblivion at the same time, of a thousand-year-old sedimentation of events and emotions that absorbs everything and makes everything compact. The shore is the object and source of endless interpretative possibilities, ranging from the discomforts of memory, through hope in a new light and for new manifestations of the truth, to a fantastic recomposition of a fractured world, that, otherwise, could not be perceived in its unity.