A holy man in front of the door of a mosque

The oil on panel shows a male character with a beard and turban, oriental trousers in white fabric and a long stick with a circle and a crescent moon in front of an oriental sacred building Its portal is supported by two small columns inserted in a niche with deeply decorated green sheets with golden Arabic inscriptions, a window with a grate, a richly decorated wooden door and a low balustrade with columns. On the left there's a sleeping dog. In this painting the preference for everyday and documentary scenes is evident. In fact, Guastalla also adds live recording to his passion for the remote, but still with a sense of the fabulous. The artwork is orderly and balanced, meticulous in its details and vibrant in the skilful use of light; the marvelous decorativism of Arab architecture is rendered with clarity, framed in silent geometries and skilful chromatic games. The theme of the Arab door is recurrent in the works of Guastalla who, observing and photographing these architectures, rethinks them and reproduces them on canvas, once returned to Parma; the figures, on the other hand, are rarely present in sketches, notebooks and photographs, but are added in the processing phase in the studio.