The Plague in Ceppaloni by Clorindo Testa Immersions into a Drawn Myth

Abstract

This article proposes an amplified interpretation of the series untitled The Plague in Ceppaloni (1977-1997) by the Italian-Argentine artist-architect Clorindo Testa. This series contains a set of maps, drawings and murals that works around the incidence of ecological problems in the human condition and habitat. The text raises in its development a triple approach to the work: the visual narrative, the archaeological and the anthropological. We decode the drawn myth structure that develops in the Middle Ages of the Italian city of Ceppaloni where the Testa comes from, and the role of its protagonists: rodents, “spreaders”, the architect himself, the medieval town, and its castle, as well as the itinerary of the Black Death during the 14th century. This author recovers the artistic idea of figuration in his work, and the idea of humanism too. In his creative manifesto, art, architecture, and ecology coexist. In this series, Testa combines the popular and the erudite with multiple techniques. The resulting synthesis is part of the imaginary of society. The two versions of the work —the plague and the ecological deterioration— coexist currently, and for this reason, its revision is a suggestive kind of exaltation of the present.