Il lento sciabordio delle stelle, 1994
Oils on canvas, 159 x 96 cm.

Private collection, current location unknown.

I don’t know why I painted this, I think it was after having seen an island in the Mediterranean when sailing with my friend Renato Cacciapuoti, but I was amused to read a description in Stephen Hawking’s book A Brief History of Time. “A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: ‘What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.’ The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, ‘What is the tortoise standing on?’ ‘You’re very clever, young man, very clever,’ said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!'”
The title was provided by another friend from years back, Alessandra Businaro, who for a time wrote articles for the local Milan paper “La Voce di Zona 3” that I was then directing with Silvia Francescato. At one of the editorial meetings, Alessandra described a dream that she had had, in which I stood up and proclaimed, “Il lento sciabordio delle stelle.” I was rather surprised, partly because I didn’t even know what the word “sciabordio” meant. But after a while I thought that it was very appropriate for this painting, which didn’t have a title. It could be translated as something like “The gentle waves of the stars” (“sciabordio” is a lovely word, but it’s one of those Italian words that don’t have an exact translation in English. Just in case you’re interested, some other examples of untranslatable Italian words or expressions are: Ti voglio bene, abbiocco, menefreghista, and the curious, solely Italian medical disorders “il cervicale,” “la congestione”, “il colpo d’aria,” and “colpo alla strega.” In addition there are the food-related expressions such as “la scarpetta” and “pasta al dente”).