If to love is to be vulnerable, hell is the suffering of not being able to love, and this is clearly distinguished in the face of the terrified young crusader and at the same time attracted by his object of love, a Muslim woman with raven hair, placed before him. in a static and indifferent attitude. Religion, race, the warring period, ditches that separate two worlds and two genders that are already difficult to approach. The stony gaze of the woman indicating oriental detachment and closure towards "the different" suggests that her soul had already been conquered. Often it is not people who disappoint us, but our own illusions. The shocked face of the crusader in fact bears physiognomic signs of a split between will and power, and this psychic dichotomy of confusion and otherness, pervading the whole work against the background of which stands a castle symbol of solitude. From this fortress starts a meandering river that divides the two immobilized figures, in an energetic knot that prevents them from making a common journey. An interior subject that faces the canvas with Mediterranean colors typical of Medieval Jerusalem and that brings back to the scene the social cages that have always closed the races. Dott.ssa Melinda Miceli art critic