Fear here operates through absence. You see the shape of a face, a hand, a torso, but the flesh is gone. You are looking at the —the empty shroud of a body that has dissolved in agony. The gold, instead of representing heaven, becomes a garish backdrop for oblivion. 3. The Inversion of Scale Samorì frequently paints on black, circular copper panels. The material is precious; the shape is intimate (like a cameo or a mirror). But the content is monstrous. Heads are twisted on spines. Mouths are frozen open in silent screams that never arrive. Because the works are small, you must lean in close. You cannot view them from a safe distance.
The Baroque period understood fear intimately. Caravaggio’s David with the Head of Goliath doesn’t just show a victory; it shows the vacant, terrifying stare of the decapitated giant—the horror of the object. Bernini’s Damned Soul captures the exact micro-second a person realizes they are lost forever. the nature of fear nicola samori
And yet, because of the painter’s devotion to the material—the rich oil, the dramatic lighting—the ugliness becomes sacred. Samorì forces us to ask: If we cannot look at suffering, can we truly understand compassion? Fear is the gateway to empathy. We are afraid of the flayed figure because we recognize that we, too, are flayed beneath our clothes. Collectors often describe a strange phenomenon when living with a Samorì. Unlike a peaceful landscape or an abstract color field, a Samorì painting does not become “furniture.” At night, in the dim light, the scraped faces seem to move. The gold backgrounds pulse. The scratches look like fresh wounds. Fear here operates through absence
