Artibus et Historiae no. 55 (XXVIII)

2007, ISSN 0391-9064

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GIUSEPPINA DAL CANTON - Odilon Redon's Le chevalier mystique: Iconographical Drifts and Hybrids

Le chevalier mystique, a work of peculiar interest for both technical (charcoal and pastel) and iconographical reasons, is a summa of typical themes of Redon's world. The way in which they are crossed and put together is, from many points of view, a real puzzle.

This essay makes many iconographical comparisons with other works by the same artist, and with those which might have been his sources, in order to support the theory that Le chevalier mystique, at first conceived as Œdipe le sphinx, may have been modified more or less at the beginning of the 1890s, when Redon's art was influenced by his interest for Wagnerian themes and by the current revival of esotericism. The artist's imaginative associations and drifts, which lead to apparently inconsistent iconographical hybrids, turn the mythical Greek hero struggling against his destiny - and, according to Freud, with the unknown part of himself, the Unconscious - into the mystical knight: symbol, like Parsifal, of man, eternally torn between reality and ideal, but also of the initiate, tireless in his quest of spiritual elevation.