The war, long months spent with soldiers in the hospital at the Billa del Seminario near Ferrara, all this could not but affect the work of de Chirico. The wounded soldier, who often comes to the artist in a dream, turns into his work as a mannequin. “The great metaphysician” is not only an image of a person deformed by war, such is the vision of man as a master. De Chirico wrote several versions of this picture.
The composition, clearly built by the artist, departs from the Renaissance atmosphere of Italian cities with their bright colors. The author depicts twilight, reminiscent of the northern lights, due to which the picture acquires the features of unreality. Against the background of the dark, full drama of the sky stands the Magnificent figure of Metaphysics. His outfit consists of draperies and wooden objects of geometric shapes – triangles, boxes, frames, boards, etc.
A great metaphysician appears as a giant alien from the future, a Nietzschean superhuman or Iron Man, described by the artist’s brother in the book “Realta dorata”. Figure Metaphysics rises in the middle of a deserted square like an ancient totem.
It is lonely, alien in the surrounding landscape – an anachronism, an alien from another era. De Chirico wrote about this in his “Ebdomeros” in 1929: “Given the weight of the more pragmatic and materialistic orientation of our civilization, it would not seem paradoxical to develop such a social system in which there will be no place under the sun for a person who lives in a spiritual life. The writer, a dreamer, a poet, a philosopher will become anachronistic figures doomed to extinction, disappearance from the face of the earth, like ichthyosaurs and mammoths. ” Before starting to work with paints, de Chirico performs a series of preliminary sketches, allowing him to elaborate a theme in more detail.
These drawings, which have been verified in composition and elegant in performance, may well be called independent graphic works. The first sketch on the canvas is very sketchy, these are only general outlines of the future picture. Then the artist makes a few more drawings, more detailed, where he draws all the elements that should appear on the canvas. In this series of sketches, the background and the environment of the main motive gradually change.
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