Massimo Bontempelli between de Chirico and Nietzsche: Mannequins, Marionettes, and the De-Humanized Subject in La scacchiera davanti allo specchio and Eva ultima

Abstract

Through analysis of the theme of mannequins and marionettes in Massimo Bontempelli's La scacchiera davanti allo specchio (1922) and Eva ultima (1923), this article explores the deep affinity between Massimo Bontempelli's work and that of the so-called Metaphysical painters, especially Giorgio de Chirico. Like de Chirico's famous dummies, Bontempelli's mannequins and marionettes represent an ironic dehumanization of the subject and are metaphors of a man reduced to a fragment, a silhouette. They stand as a critique of the dehumanization to which man is subject in the modern world and as a metaphor of the cognitive enigma and the fictional character of truth and reality expressed by Nietzsche's philosophy. Bontempelli's engagement with these issues, as well as with themes such as the constructed nature of identity and the artificiality of human relations in the modern world, makes him one of the key figures in the debates that shaped Italian Modernism.