Anguish

This work is the right-hand side panel of an enormous tempera diptych entitled ‘Parallel,’ which Laurenti exhibited at the Venice Biennale of 1901. The common theme of the whole work was supposed to be a comparison between the calm and sensual light heartedness of life in the past and the tragic bitterness of modern life. On the left panel, which is now part of an American collection, the artist depicted three young naked girls in an orange grove intertwining in a dance at dusk. On the right one, part of the collection of the Gallery in Palermo, he conveyed the moving desperation of three young girls committing suicide and waiting for death in poses of anguishing abandonment in a desolate room.