Cornelia Urbanilla

This picture, or rather the inscription in the top left-hand corner, proves that the artist was interested in mysticism and esoterism. The young woman painted by Ludomir Sleńdziński (1889–1980) is an imaginary portrayal of the wife of the Roman Tiberius Claudius Vitalis, who lived in or near the city of Batna at the end of the third century, and died young. The artist reproduced carefully the Greek inscriptions on her tombstone in Lambiridi in Algeria. One of the inscriptions says that Cornelia Urbanilla lived for exactly 28 years, ten months, 12 days, and nine hours, while the other reads: ‘I did not exist, I came into being, I do not exist, and I don’t care.’ Based on these texts and the mosaic-style composition, representing a naked and exhausted woman being examined by a bearded doctor, researchers associate the tombstone (in the National Archaeological Museum of Algeria) with the philosophical doctrine of Hermeticism, which began to spread in North Africa in the second century. The term is derived from the name of Hermes Trismegistus. The treatise Corpus Hermeticum attributed to him was studied by medieval alchemists, and Renaissance philosophers and theologians. All of this inspired Sleńdziński’s imagination. In Second World War memoirs about Sleńdziński, his interest in astrology is emphasised, while Antique and Hellenic characters appeared in his oeuvre as early as the 1920s. Despite the artist’s inclination towards mysticism, his pictures preserve clear and harmonious forms, as in this example. Text author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė.