Observations placeholder
Segantini - Engel des Lebens 1894 [L'angelo della vita]
Identifier
008124
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
There are references in a number of scholarly works to ideas of the 'bad mother' that Segantini used. Segantini was inspired by Nirvana, a poem written by the 12th century monk Luigi Illica in imitation of the Indian text Panghiavahli. Illica's poem contained the phrase 'la Mala Madre', but the 'Bad Mother' in Indian cosmology refers to Mother and Father symbolism and the two roles of the Mother as Creator and Destroyer - the one responsible for Life and Death.
Given his wife's tuberculosis and his mother and father's early deaths, Segantini would have been all too aware of the dual nature of the Mother.
But here we have a celebration of the Mother as Life and the bringer of life into the world - literal and figurative.
A description of the experience
